#and sam and john have the same conversation they had in canon except john’s only apologizing for not saying goodbye

[ardentpoop]

I’m pretty sure @finalgirlsamwinchester said this first but supernatural episode 14.13 “lebanon” except it’s succession austerlitz family therapy

[nevermindirah]

Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).

Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)

The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.

In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.

Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?

I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.

Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.

And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.

I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.

Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.

I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.

One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)

Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.

Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.

It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.

Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.

[goldenraeofsun]

Good Ideas

1.5k of canon-divergence fluff, now on AO3!

Dean is almost finished with his standard gun cleaning (once a week whether they need it or not) when footsteps approach from outside his bedroom door. Heavier than Eileen but lighter than Sam - must be Cas. 

“What an awful day,” Cas sighs as he practically throws himself onto Dean’s prized memory foam mattress. He doesn’t even take his shoes off first, like an animal.

“Hello to you, babe,” Dean says, amused. He raises his head to fully look at Cas, now face planted into his pillow. Dean would like to say it’s unusual to see Cas this drained and frustrated after another shift at the Gas n Sip, but it’s become pretty much standard. And, because not-that-deep-down Dean’s a shitty person who lucked out and got a (fallen) angel to fall for him, he can’t entirely squash the pleased feeling in his gut that flares up every time Cas comes home to him, no matter the circumstances.

“Hello, Dean,” or that’s what Dean assumes Cas is saying, based on their past million and a half conversations over more than a decade.

Dean carefully sets down his colt and pads over to the bed. He takes a seat near Cas’s shins, the mattress slowly but surely dipping as it remembers Dean’s distinctive ass print. “What happened?”

“Humanity is stupid.”

Dean snorts. “Don’t have to tell me twice. What’d humanity do this time?”

Cas turns his head so he can glare balefully down at Dean with one brilliant blue eye. “Todd refilled the soda machine incorrectly. We had to reimburse ten customers who poured the wrong drinks despite the clear signs indicating the buttons were temporarily incorrect.”

“What a disaster,” Dean deadpans.

Cas groans a stream of indistinguishable words that might not even be English - knowing him, he’s probably insulting Todd’s mother ancient Aramaic or something - before he concludes, “It was a very uncomfortable situation. Todd is an imbecile.”

“Want me to kill him for you?” Dean asks casually.

Cas’s whole torso inflates with the depth of his sigh. “No,” he says, but the word is muffled and has zero conviction behind it.

“Come on,” Dean pokes Cas in the thigh. “You were the one who wanted this job in the first place. All the ‘human dignity’ you could choke down and all that crap.”

“I must’ve been mistaken.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Dean says, grinning as Cas rolls over so he’s lying normally on Dean’s bed. “Y’know, you could always do something else. Quit the Gas n Sip.”

“Like what?” Cas asks as he frowns up at the ceiling. “I don’t have much experience except in inventory management and customer service.”

“What about all your angel stuff?”

“I can hardly list ‘former Angel of the Lord’ on my resume,” Cas grumbles.

“You’ve got all those languages crammed in your brain, serious hand-to-hand skills - I could teach you all I know about cars, and you can add that.”

Cas gives a considering grunt.

“Look,” Dean says as he scoots further up the bed so he’s more aligned with Cas’s chest than his knees. “You were the one who was all gung-ho about getting a job to interact with normal people.”

“I needed a better baseline now I’m human because you and Sam are not ‘normal’ by any definition of the word,” Cas sniffs.

“Rude. Anyway, I told you to take things slow. So your first stab back at slumming it with regular folks isn’t going so great. Sometimes these things take a while to settle down,” Dean says, uncomfortably reminded of the time he had to comfort Sammy after three piano lessons didn’t turn him into the next Geoff Nicholls - or Elton John, as Dean had to amend after Sammy shot him a look of complete incomprehension.

“You don’t have to throw yourself into anything,” Dean adds gently to Cas. “We’ve got no big bad waiting out in the wings. It’s okay to take things one step at a time.”

“Because you provide such an excellent model of restraint and forethought,” Cas mutters.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Obviously. You don’t see me jumping back into Leave it to Beaver.”

“Because that’s not what you want,” Cas says, his eyes narrowing. “You said civilian life isn’t for you.”

Dean swallows. He pulls at a wrinkle in the sheets. “You so sure about that?”

Cas props himself up on his elbows, intrigued. “You’re truly considering retiring from hunting?”

Dean glances over at his guns, disassembled and gleaming on his desk. “I’ve been thinking about it. Sammy doesn’t go on many hunts anymore, says it’s more important to teach the next generation of fighters than handling everything by ourselves.”

“A wise thing to say, considering the limitations of the average human lifespan.”

“And you wonder why we never bring you to parties,” Dean says as Cas scowls in return, really only proving Dean’s point. “I’ve been looking into other stuff to do.”

“Like what?”

“Not sure,” he admits. “Sam’s got his Hunter Hogwarts thing going on - I could help Sam out, but the thought of reading and assignments makes me want to throw myself out a window.”

“You do like to be more hands-on,” Cas says diplomatically.

Dean sighs, wistful. “If the Roadhouse was still around, I would’ve kicked ass there. Talking with veterans in the business, passing along intel, throwing out the occasional brawler.”

Cas cocks his head. “Why don’t you rebuild one?”

“What?”

“Another Roadhouse,” Cas says like it’s obvious. “Those hunters Sam is teaching, they will need another meeting point once they’ve completed their training.”

Dean gapes at him, trying not to get his hopes up. He can picture it with alarming clarity, him behind the bar, Cas sitting off to the side, pouring over the books or a translation for one of Sam’s kids.

But this thing with Cas is so new - rescuing Cas from the Empty, telling him haltingly and not in so many words Cas could have what he wanted after all, doing their weird not-dating thing that works for them. Dean can’t be sure they’re on the same page about this.

Cas is technically human, but so many parts of him are still pretty out there in terms of fitting in with normal people stuff. Dean suggested they go on an honest to God date about two weeks after that went down - dinner at a fancy place in Salina. He even looked it up on Yelp. But, naturally, Cas had to ask ahead of time what usually happened on a date - a real date, Dean, because Metatron’s pop culture dump gave me many false impressions of what is normal or healthy for humans. 

When Dean embarrassingly couldn’t think of a single thing people did on dates except eat and have sex, Cas went to Sam because apparently there are zero boundaries when it comes to Team Free Will. And Sam, like a total Samantha, said most people talked about their feelings and life goals.

To which Cas turned back to Dean, said those big, I love you, words like they’re nothing and everything, and added his life goal was not dying before spending the rest of his human life with Dean.

The fucker even looked pleased Dean didn’t have to shell out the dough for a fancy steak.

“You have enough connections in the community to round up a decent clientele base,” Cas continues. “Not to mention your reputation, which would go a long way towards drawing hunters you personally haven’t met before.”

Dean clears his throat. “You really think I could do something like that?”

Cas narrows his eyes. “I think you could do anything you set your mind to,” he says with that patented-Cas sincerity that Dean would call bullshit with anyone else. Cas continues, “Twenty-seven percent of restaurants fail in their first year, but I have every confidence in you beating the odds.”

Dean snorts. Even Cas’s Beautiful Mind statistics aren’t enough to bring his mood down.

“And if you need help…” Cas drifts off sheepishly, “I do have requisite experience managing inventory. I cut down on unsellable food by fifteen percent two weeks ago.”

“You’re a goddamn genius,” Dean breathes as he bends over Cas.

Cas smiles up at him. “Would you want to?”

“Would I - ?” Dean breaks off incredulously to kiss him. “Of couse I fucking want to. But you really think it’s a good idea?”

Cas purses his lips. “It was my suggestion in the first place.”

“But maybe you were just spitballing,” Dean hedges. “So if you really think restarting the Roadhouse would be a bad idea, I can take it.”

Cas wraps a hand around the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him closer. “I don’t have bad ideas, Dean,” he murmurs.

That is so blatantly untrue, Dean almost bursts out laughing. But before he can make a sound, Cas’s other hand slides underneath his shirt, his fingers tapping lightly against the buckle of Dean’s belt. Dean raises his head to catch sight of Cas's face, and Cas’s eyes are dark with want.

Alright, so in times like these, Dean can admit Cas can have a good idea or two.

[holyhellpod]

Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving. 

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold. 

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show. 

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

 I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit. 

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins. 

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art. 

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural,  he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag. 

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living. 

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism. 

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to. 

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it. 

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light. 

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line. 

 Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence. 

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade. 

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome.  I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else. 

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half. 

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves. 

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome. 

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight. 

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer. 

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it. 

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace. 

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar. 

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says: 

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.  

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean. 

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to. 

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas.  Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna. 

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life. 

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs. 

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.” 

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it. 

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do. 

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another. 

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it. 

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours. 

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay? 

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas. 

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure. 

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar! 

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.” 

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

[laora-inn]

Supernatural - Does Dean keep Cas’s photo in 12x02? A bit on Mary’s significance

Hi, guys. 

Currently writing a meta about Destiel and pies, I re-watched 12x02 and noticed something UNUSUAL at the end of episode. Now I can remember this was also bothering me while watching for the first time but I’d just filtered it. The 25th frame effect you know. 

Strange thing, I didn’t analyze it and didn’t even read meta about it. I checked out and found this amazing post written by @charlie-minion. I’m totally agree with it, but also want to speculate about something more.

Now let me clarify :)

12x02 is an episode where Mary, Dean and Cas save Sam from Toni (BMoL). Mary tries to find her place in the bunker, with her new family, and Sam brings her John’s journal to read. Mary opens it, looks at John’s photo where he is a soldier (we saw this photo in journal in 1x09) and then discovers another one. This:

We saw this photo before. When? In 5x04! In the End!Universe, when Cas was a human and a junkie. This photo was important to the plot. When Dean came to Bobby’s house in the End!Universe he found this picture in a secret place, saw the camp title on it, saw Cas and Bobby in it and went there. I took some screen-caps from 5x04 to prove my point:

We never knew what Dean’d done with this photo after. It wasn’t important, to tell the truth. 

And now Mary discovers it in John’s journal. 

At first you can say it’s a mistake of the crew. John is a soldier in his solo picture, then there are some pictures where his brothers-in-arms could be, with him included. If there is some picture where soldiers are, the crew may just take it for the scene. 

But then Mary reaction comes. She shakes her head a little and returns this photo to the diary. She can’t recognize anyone from this picture - besides Cas, I suppose. She even doesn’t know Bobby this far. And there is no John in the picture - despite of the fact it’s his journal! 

But we know. We know them both, Bobby and Cas. So it can’t be a mistake also because of our familiarity with the characters. 

@charlie-minion​ writes “I don’t think the photo was a huge element of the plot, but it did help the audience have a visual reminder of a time when the world had collapsed and Bobby Singer was fighting angels”, and I’m totally agree with that - by the end of the season we’ll see another parallel universe, not End!verse, but also with Bobby fighting angels and Apocalypse world. And yep, in 5x04 “Cas was fighting with the humans, not against them. Whereas Castiel in the alternate universe was fighting with the angels. Interesting to think that the big difference between one world and the other was the existence of Dean Winchester”. 

So the crew’s perspective why they chose this photo to show us is clear. But why the hell did they put it in John’s journal?!

We know Dean was the only one who could bring it from the 2014 End!verse. Was it him who put the picture in this journal? And why? 

I don’t think Dean’s shared his experience in End!verse with anyone. It was his part of a story, his point of view, too personal to tell anyone, even Sam or Cas. I suppose maybe he brought this photo to remember events he didn’t want to happen and to make everything not to end like that. But again - why did he put this photo in the journal? 

At first it was like lore collection to the Winchesters, but then they moved to the bunker and used to find information in different books. John’s journal became just one of them. So it was more his personal belonging then, a memory of him, just like photos of Mary with Dean or young Sam and Dean with Bobby. 

We know John’s Impala and old jacket became Dean’s once a time. Can we suggest that after 1x01 it’s Dean who also keeps John’s journal? 

I think we can. Trivia:

1x02 - Sam takes Dean aside and asks for John's journal. Dean pulls it out of his jacket. 

4x03 - Dean has the journal with him when Cas sends him back to 1973. Before that he slept - though he had his jacket with him. The journal was in it.

5x03 - Dean studies the Journal while waiting for Cas. That time Dean and Sam were separated for a while, and that was Dean who had the journal.��

8x08 - Cas looks through John’s journal and says to Dean: “Your father... beautiful handwriting”. Before that he looked through Dean’s personal belongings - toothpaste, toothbrush. There is no real need for Cas to read the journal - Dean was reading it just when Cas was handling his things. I suppose that Cas’s examining it the same way he’s examining other Dean’s belongings. ‘Cause of personal space lack between two of them.

9x12 - The last time John’s journal was seen before 12x02. Dean is separated from Sam again and takes it IN THE BAR with him. When Crowley asks for it, Dean pulls the journal out of his jacket.

Sam also reads journal from time to time, but it’s Dean who carries it with him everywhere in his jacket - like his wallet. I think Sam is still asking for the journal. I suggest he asked Dean for it before giving it to Mary in 12x02. 

From 1x01 to 12x02 the journal was Dean’s. 

And if that’s true, then this photo from the End!verse wasn’t supposed to be seen by anyone except Dean himself. Sam’ll definitely ask about it if he’s noticed, and, in my opinion, Dean still doesn’t want to answer questions connected with this picture.

In 8x14 Dean decorates his own room with the photo of him and Mary. He pulls it out of his wallet. We can see other family photos later in his room, framed or not - in 10x03, 10x22, 11x22, and mostly they are hidden. In Dean’s notebook, in different boxes. In 11x11 we saw Sam has his own box with pictures either. Before that he told about family photos with Eileen. 

So, the photos are hidden, but they are all in the same place for each of Sam and Dean. In fact they have different pictures, and in 11x11 we didn’t see any photo of John in Sam’s box. 

Maybe, that’s because Sam didn’t admire John the way Dean did. Of course, he loved him, but in 14x13 Sam would be the one who’d be against John’s appearance in the bunker. On the other hand, Dean’d be blissful... until he’d discover John’s presence'd make Cas stranger to him. Yep. 

Well, Cas was never so important to Sam than he is to Dean. That’s canon. 

And maybe that’s the reason Dean actually has 2 places for photos to keep. One of them is some place in his room - the box, the notebook. The other is John’s journal, with 2 photos - of young John and...  

The photo that has Cas in. Not Dean’s Cas, but the Cas who was definitely closer to HIS Dean than Dean’s Cas is to him. In the End!verse Dean and Cas basically had only each other.

I’ve read a meta where was mentioned that after Cas’s death in 12x23 Dean had no his photos. Well, he had. In 13x02 Sam and Dean used John’s journal again, so Mary returned it by that time - if only Dean hadn’t pulled the End!verse photo out of it earlier. 

He kept this picture since 5x04, just like he kept Cas’s trench coat in season 7, and Sam had no clue about it. It’s not his business, it’s not HIS RELATIONSHIP. Impala belongs to Dean, John’s journal belongs to Dean. End!verse photo with Cas belongs to Dean, and he keeps it with him in John’s journal like he kept Mary’s photo in his wallet. Ahem. 

Crucial to say, Sam, Dean, Bobby, Mary and John are the only people in family photos. No Charlie, no Kevin, no Garth. Maybe because of digital era? 

And here we have a photo with Cas, and Dean keeps it for himself. Until Mary comes. 

Maybe, Mary assumes that all the men in this picture are hunters. Maybe, she doesn’t even recognize Cas - she is in a difficult state. I don’t think this photo helps her to recognize Bobby later - it has no text “Bobby” on it, so the source for her recognizing him should be different. Well, Sam and Dean both have photos with Bobby, even framed. Maybe she just asked about Bobby when she saw him in another picture. 

In 12x02 while Mary is looking at End!verse photo Dean is also looking through his family pictures. I think that’s no coincidence there is no John in them.

Dean’s looking through the first part of his family photos, which he possibly could share with Sam. The second part, more personal, now in Mary’s hands with John’s journal that we know was Dean’s by this time.   

From 12x02 Mary metaphorically becomes a keeper of Dean’s secrets.

In 12x03 Mary also had a conversation with Cas. That was the time I thought they could be a nice couple because of dynamics. However they have no COUPLE dynamics - there is always Dean whom they’re both having in their minds, though in absolutely different ways. Mary as her grown child, Cas as his equal. 

From the first meeting, when Mary saw Cas hugging her son, for seasons 12-15 dynamics between them is significant to the main plot. But not because of its romantic (or parenting whatever) tone. It’s rather... understanding? Appreciation? Gratitude?

What does the text give to us is that Mary is significant to DeanCas relationship progressing. 

[thecloserkin]

Doom (2005) fic roundup

I have now recommended this action/sci-fi/horror film based on a bestselling video game franchise to not one not two but three friends and I am happy to report they all concur, cinema Peaked in 2005, this is the best movie ever made. I watched it for the first time on @shipcestuous‘s recommendation: She has an extremely thorough breakdown here, and the pitch of her enthusiasm and the penetration of her analysis are without peer. Honestly I can’t think of a single reason not to watch this movie. Watch it for Rosamund Pike. Watch it for Karl Urban. Watch it to marvel at how much Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s acting chops have improved in the past 15 years. I have now seen this cinematic masterpiece three (3) times and I have zero (0) regrets. There is a sequel out, Doom: Annihilation (2019) but it’s not worth your time. Recently I went through the John Grimm/Samantha Grimm tag on ao3 and read every single fic, most of them for the second or third time, and I had a fucking blast. Friends, if any of you would like to experience this cinematic masterpiece for yourselves please please PLEASE message me and i’ll send you the link to dl it.

Doom (2005, dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak) is about a squad of Marines dispatched to contain a zombie outbreak in a secure scientific facility on Mars. There is no earthly reason for it to be set on Mars btw so I just chalk this decision up to video game continuity (same with the first-person-shooter sequence in the third act, which is five minutes long and it was the longest five minutes of my life). What’s impressive about this film is it somehow manages not to glorify (1) the military or (2) the scientific establishment. It’s a film stuffed to the gills with dudebros (outside of Rosamund Pike they’re all dudebros) yet to my eternal delight the humor actually landed, and I think the anarchist bent of the narrative is a big part of why (anarchist as in hella skeptical of authority). I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say this is another “we tried to cure cancer, accidentally unleashed the zombie apocalypse” setup. What’s surprising is that the protagonists are failed by science, as an institution. Our protagonists are one of the Marines (Karl Urban) and his estranged twin sister (Rosamund Pike), who is an archaeologist at the quarantined facility. The chemistry between these two is instantly and unmistakably through the fucking roof. The first time they appear in the same frame the other Marines mistake her for his ex, and it just gets better from there. Every time I watch it, the final frame of this film has me flailing and screeching. I still can’t believe we got a mainstream movie that was this good to us—horror movies in general have a track record of being good to us ‘cest shippers, but this is on another level.

cold hearts, thawing by merely (3k) They’re on the run and they get FAKE MARRIED!!! My god the amount of characterization smuggled into this—Jon and Sam getting hot for each other’s respective areas of competence is my entire kink. It’s not predominantly humorous in tone but the humor slaps in the best way. This is my forever favorite because it was written by one of the friends I got into the movie, so tailor-made for meeee ❤

Before, During, After by anr (1k) If you plotted the arc of their lives it would be a circle. Something about the spareness of the prose & the amount of stuff occurring in the interstices really stayed with me. I realized later it’s because I’d read another of the author’s fics from a diff fandom—it’s in the same mode, love to see it when authors just nail that one register.

DOOMED by chase_acow (1k) ”I thought you said your microbiology was rusty!" "You know I like it when you give me the bottom line.” Lmaooo. In case you haven’t noticed this fandom consists almost entirely of post-canon getting (back) together fic.

Normal by mneiai (<1k) Shut the front door did somebody say pre-canon getting-together fic??! Of course we all know 90% of the reason John enlisted was to flee his feelings for Sam right.

Glimpses of Clarity by izzyb (1.5k) John and Sam have rough sex and it’s completely consensual, but still scary. Part of working through trauma is recognizing that removing oneself from the traumatic situation does not, in itself, dispel the trauma. John has this inability to relinquish control, or abate his vigilance—except, apparently, when he’s fucking Sam hahaha.

Written in the Scars (of our hearts) by Mercury32 (21k, unfinished) I don’t read a lot of soulmark AUs so idk if this is common but it turns out John and Sam are not soulmates??? He gets his tattoo covered up because he’s only ever wanted Sam. They’re on the run because there’s a nationwide manhunt on and they take refuge in their grandpa’s cabin in the woods and along the way they meet Jon’s actual soulmate but he chooses Sam. He will always choose Sam until the day they put him in the ground. The conversation where they explained to their ex-CIA grandfather how they were going undercover as newlyweds is unadulterated gold.

No Heroics by amathela (3k) They go back to their jobs. They try to keep John’s newfound abilities under wraps so as not to turn him into a target or a military guinea pig. The stakes are high but it’s so …. whimsical? And domestic? It’s so good ahhhhh I love it when they’re trying to hide something other than the incest. “He never was able to win an argument against her.” “She rolls her eyes. ‘Not all of us are as pretty as you.’”

He a Tiger Will Be Who Drinks of Me by Brenda (3k) This story is packing some serious mythological and folkloric resonances. I was going to label it post-canon but half of it is pre-canon. When you frame their relationship as Ares and Aphrodite, Selene and Endymion, it does seem inevitable doesn’t it? All roads lead to you.

Need You Tonight by Mercury32 (2.5k) Hot damn it’s a pwp that’s kicked off by Sam having nightmares, and is all about how Sam trusts John implicitly. I still think about the way Rosamund Pike delivers that line in the movie, I know you, like, on a weekly basis. “You've ruined me for other men and I'll probably be walking uncomfortably tomorrow, but no, you didn't hurt me.”

And I Know What You’re Thinking by amathela (1k) Sam loses a lot of blood and John donates his. Course, now that John is a genetically modified superhuman this creates a psychic bond between them. Nobody does dialogue like amathela does, it’s like you can hear the words behind the words the characters are saying.

Homecoming by amathela (1k) Not as playful as her work usually is but still lovely and understated.

Ephelides by Rahmi (1k) Sam gives John anatomy lessons and it’s sexy as haaaaale. "Just because I'm about to give you a handjob doesn't mean I'm not still your sister.” "Your intelligence reflects on me. And you're my brother. Therefore, you're intelligent."

The Edge of DOOM by chase_acow (1.7k) I don’t know what’s going on but the apocalypse is here and Sam and John are shooting things.

If You Don’t Know Me by Now by Mercury32 (4k) Sam and John rifle through his unsent letters and it isn’t 100% full-blown epistolary but we still get a firm idea of what they were up to for those ten years apart. Ok but CONSIDER: what if they sent each other birthday postcards. Imagine!! This line in particular cracked me up: “Congratulations, you finally got your wish of being an only child.”

desert ghosts by river_soul (1k) They’re not “almost home” because they’re together therefore already home asdfkdjfkdjfd. Gorgeously wrought.

You Hit Me Once (kiss with a fist) by aohatsu (3k) I could read pre-canon John/Sam fics at a rate of 100k a day probs. God these kids are so lonely and nobody else understands. John getting into schoolyard brawls to defend Sam’s honor? Habitual bedsharing???!

I Wanna Kiss You (but i want it too much) by Mercury32 (<1k) It’s not a missing moment from canon, exactly—it’s a replay of the scene where the squad meets Sam, only the camera is firmly situated inside John’s head this time. “His fingers are twitching with the need to hold her, to see if the curve of her hip still fits into the palm of his hand, if her forehead still tucks perfectly into his neck. Like a jigsaw puzzle, she'd observed once, made to fit together.”

No Relation by aj2245 (<400 words) I mean the “surprise! they’re not related” reveal came outta nowhere but it was worth it just for this line: “Life on Mars is fragile. The three coffins waiting in the Ark anti-chamber speak to that. One little mistake and she's lost everything. She's lost John, it's just on time delay.”

In the Blood and the Bone by kyrene (10k) Pwp where John and Sam try to get pregnant. It wasn’t my thing but it’s the top-bookmarked fic in the tag, so other people must’ve liked it, and I always try to assume other people are acting rationally so there must be something this fic does well that I’m missing because I don’t care about that facet that much.

**This is not an exhaustive list of John/Sam fics, just a list of the ones I had anything coherent to say about. I do not think there is a single bad fic in the tag and they’re all bite-sized and bingeable!

[seenashwrite]

do we know anything about john winchester's parents, besides Henry? Do you have any speculation as to why the boys were named after Mary's parents? We learn from Henry that he hadn't abandoned young John. Thanks to Abaddon. But I need more!

Ah, an autopsy. Everybody gown up. Grab the rib spreader. This is gonna be a good one. Characters like Millie are my most favorite when it comes to writing in the vein of “based on…” and “adapted by…” because we have little information on them, meaning we can fill in those cracks ourselves, but at the same time? In this case, at least? The little bit we’ve got on Millie holds a lot.

Brief disclaimer: I am of the opinion that the writers (excepting Kripke, who was playing the long game with a five-year plan) aren’t doing as much foreshadowing and employing other sneaky-tricksy, deep-seated literary gambits as I’ve noted more than a few viewers assert; it seems to me that the writers backtrack and use past plot points (broadly, that is - evidence has shown us that, on the whole, they aren’t precise canon adherents) to bolster present/immediate-future arcs. However, it gives us the opportunity to expound upon the more minute things/characters they’ve forgotten about and/or left to languish.

Let’s do a list of knowns vs. unknowns about The Mysterious Mrs. Winchester, because the former’s more important than the latter when getting our brains on task for an adaptation/based-upon piece, a.k.a. fanfiction. I have used her as a pivotal player (in the backstory) for my big story, so minus some specific lines I just pulled from a script, the following is coming from my (canon-based) notes. You have come to the right person #humbly #not really #Millie’s my jam 

Check this out.

Millie has only come up twice in the show, most recently on Lady Antonia “Brain-Diddle” Bevell’s grossly incomplete mood board, then in a flashback during a conversation between Henry and Josie. Watch your step for that turd of exposition dump up top:

Catch that? 

Item #1: Millie is aware of Henry’s job / The MoLs

Perhaps she’s even met Josie - decent speculation, Josie is her husband’s partner, at least for now, in the context of their novice/initiate status, and Josie felt comfortable referring to Millie by name to Henry, vs. saying “Your wife is lucky to have you.”

To what degree is Millie in-the-know? Specifically, is she aware of the paranormal bend of it all? That’s a crack we can fill. She could very well be under the impression this is some sort of niche government division.

I vote “no”. I think Henry would’ve said, “Except she doesn’t know, Josie. She doesn’t know what we deal with, how dangerous the work can be. All she’d know is that she’s become a widow….”

A little sidebar to bolster my claims of her being in the know - whether Henry had, in the past, started tip-toeing down the road of cluing in John on his work is unknown, but he sure as shit was starting to edge there based on the whole “What’s that pin mean” - “You’ll find out” exchange. Now, Henry’s smart, and smart people know that telling your offspring to keep things secret from the other parent is a dumbass move, from beans to beanstalks, and particularly when they’re in mouthy toddler beansprout stage, that crew can’t keep anything secret, it ain’t how they’re wired.

So Millie knows, and I think Millie knows about the bumps in the night. I think she knows Henry’s father and grandfather were members. And she knows that means John’s on deck. And she knows that’s bad news. Here’s why.

Item #2: Millie & John move from Illinois

Henry went missing in ‘58, we’ve no idea when when she moved. Was she from Illinois? Did she move alone? Did she have family somewhere? Did she go there first? Did she go straight to Kansas? Why did she end up in Kansas? Nobody knows. We’ve zero knowledge of anything in this area. Plot away.

But we do have the knowledge she got herself and her son the hell outta Dodge. She left friends. Took John away from his friends. Left the house she shared with her husband. Again: did she lose the house? Did she not have a skill set that would’ve = decent employment? Do the MoLs not have some sort of killed-in-the-line-of-duty spousal/family payout? Was it a crappy one? Got me.

Point is, single motherhood is tough now, much less the further back in time you go. It’s possible she did just fine on her own.

But let’s talk probable.

Item #3: Millie remarried & put down roots in Kansas

When we meet adult John, a random in town tells him “Say hello to your old man for me.” 

[glances around] 

Cool.

Now, the writers - when they had to do the whole MoL thing in order to get us to the bunker so there was a stable set piece for consistency or budget or whatever - absolutely forgot this one-off comment that was made in the infancy of the show, guaranteed, hundred percent, no way I’m wrong. Same goes for the one-off “comes from a family of mechanics” line that some fans glom onto. 

These are canon misfires that piddled into the ocean, never tore through the hull of another ship, and are No Big Deal. [yes I know the difference between cannon and canon, I’m being cheeky, nobody “@” me] Upshot is, we get to stick it into the Millie file. Make stepdad a mechanic. Boom. Done.

In any event, I use the phrase “puts down roots” because this is where John returned to when he left the service, got a job as a mechanic, ultimately started dating this chick named Mary, so this was home. We can reasonably assume, then, that he’d lived there for most of his life, given how young he was when he signed up for the service*.

[* Note: I state vs. suggest because I have extensive character autopsies done on both John and Mary; I’ve covered a bit of my Mary diagnoses elsewhere; just letting y'all know it’s why I tend to state things about them vs. quantify it with “My impression is…”, etc., because I’ve got a decently robust pile of evidence to support my statements; J & M aren’t the topic here, though]

I actually like the misfire line about mechanics, and I like saying that stepdad is a mechanic, because it tracks with items #1-4 above, and gives us…

Item #5: Millie didn’t want John to be in the Men of Letters and made critical life choices to prevent such

Two points for this item:

—> She went from being the wife of an academic professional involved with covert ops to being the wife of a mechanic

This isn’t impossible or strange or noteworthy in-and-of itself. I’m not saying it is, not shitting on blue collar workers or persons who specialize in a trade vs. those on a scholarly track. I don’t mean to infer that Millie - as a single mom in the early ‘60s - lowered her standards or something, that she was desperate for a husband and took what she could get; on the contrary, based on how important knowledge and order was to Henry, how he looked down his nose at what he found to be the pedestrian lifestyle/life choices of hunters, I’d assert that Millie was quite intelligent and perhaps even “upper-crust”.

But that sharp turn, regardless of the impetus, does go to our Millie profile. It’s just interesting, that flip of her switch, especially when you combine it with the move from her established life with a young child.

—> She never told John the truth about Henry’s disappearance

Why? Why would you do that to your kid? Why would you allow him to have the impression - and the heartache from - believing he was abandoned?

Because - what trumps everything (or should) for a parent?

Protecting your kid.

The Namesake Question

Real answer: the characters didn’t exist at the time the show’s skeleton was being assembled.

Moving on to the answer(s) we can divine based on canon…

First obvious answer, on the Millie front, is they had two boys. Yeah, yeah, could’ve been “Miller” or her maiden name or something, and we don’t know their middle names, etc. Knock it out, throw it in as a plot point. And true, it’s not like they went with, say, Henry and Sam. The Dean character could’ve pulled off the nickname “Hank”, admittedly difficult as it is to imagine from our current vantage point. So, you’re right - it’s a thing. 

Again, I’ve long had autopsies done on John and Mary, adding to them over seasons 11-13 (when I started watching in real time), and those are lengthy, winding roads that do branch off of the Millie highway, but aren’t the topic here. Just a reminder that all the things I’m presenting below in a factual tone, I’ve got evidence to back it up.

Based on John and Mary’s behavior, their choices, their parenting styles, we can paint a pretty clear picture in our minds of their childhoods. For John, we’ve covered the broad sweeps of his to the extent we can by way of examining Millie. For Mary, we have more, and have seen her parents and their behavior, their choices, their parenting style. I don’t see the Campbells as putting family first above all (they put the mission first - sound like anyone else we know?), whereas Henry has been shown to love his wife and son more than anything, so had John been exposed to him? Wow. We probably wouldn’t recognize him.

But as it stands, John doesn’t have an instinctual reaction to put family above everything else. Neither does Mary, as we’ve since learned. Dean does, vehemently, and as Sam matured, his instinct has changed to be this way, as well. It happens - some of us, either purposefully or unintentionally, end up replicating our childhoods for our children; others, like Dean and Sam, strive to do the opposite. Even siblings growing up in the same environment can go different directions - it’s a crap shoot to a degree, whether when, upon leaving the house, you go out the front door or the back.

So while I don’t see that Mary was particularly close to Deanna and Samuel, I do find there’s enough to support that John wasn’t close at all to Millie. Absence of evidence does not = proof, true, so the lack of him talking about his mother alone doesn’t exactly make a solid case. Having said that, there’s multiple reasons (again-again, that’s for another time) based on solid evidence (i/e, John’s actions/decisions), which have me leaning towards he and his mother being anywhere from distant to estranged, not covering that list, but one that’s germane to our current topic is this:

When John got busy investigating Mary’s death - or letting folks assume he was working through his grief by ditching his business and checking out on being a father - he left Dean and Sam with Mike and Kate Guenther while he was off drinking and researching, perhaps others (and yes, Bobby later, but I’m talking about initially, in their hometown) if the Guenthers were unable, and who knows who all if he left for days at a time.

So why did John and Dean and Sam not ever stay with Millie? Why were Dean and Sam not left with their grandmother? She was right there.

Well, the answer is that the writers didn’t think of Henry (and by extension, Millie) til seasons later, but for us, it’s a crack that could be filled, a nice deep one, too. 

Three possibilities:

(1) Millie had died prior(2) Millie and John were not close, possibly estranged(3) Millie did help watch after Dean and Sam

Numbers 1 and 2 are plausible, and it actually could be both. Could also spin it to where Millie was dead, stepfather was alive (we have evidence of that, see above, RE: rando dude’s “Say hi to your old man for me”) and John wasn’t comfortable leaving Dean and Sam with him, or there was some reason the stepdad was unable to take care of them, or maybe John loved stepdad dearly and would have stayed with him/left the kids with him, but stepdad had died or remarried or moved away before Dean was born. Fill in that blank yourself.

I don’t find number 3 very probable, as it’s not mentioned in John’s journal. He specifically mentions Mike and Kate several times. He even mentions Missouri meeting Dean and Sam, how they really took to her immediately. He would’ve mentioned Millie.

I say all that to say, the lack of naming one of the boys after Henry is of note, but not mysterious for me because John was under the impression that his father ditched him and his mother. And, um...

.

INT. DINER – DAY

We see a close-up of a black-and-white photograph of HENRY holding a baseball with his arm around a young boy holding a bat. HENRY is sitting at a table holding the photograph. DEAN and SAM are standing at the counter.

SAM Driver's license says he's Henry Winchester from Normal, Illinois. He knows Dad's birthday, the exact place where he was born. Dude, that's our grandfather.

DEAN I'm just saying before we break out the warm and toasties, let's not forget that, uh, H.G. Wells over there left Dad high and dry when he was a kid.

SAM But maybe he didn't run out on Dad – I mean, not on purpose. Maybe he time-traveled here and, I don't know, got stuck.

DEAN Yeah, well, either way, Dad hated the son of a bitch.

.

So name-wise for the Winchester side? Miller, Mills, a maiden name - I can see something as a namesake for Millie still being plausible as one of their middle names; a Henry namesake never had a chance in hell. 

And despite neither John nor Mary behaving as if they truly buy into the whole FAMILY IS EVERYTHING stance, Samuel and Deanna died a horrible death, and not far away - it happened when both John and Mary were in the mix, Mary specifically. I don’t see her having to push very hard to get John on board with naming their kids after her parents following a shared traumatic experience.

Alrighty, then.

We can send some samples off to the lab, I hear the Stynes run a really thorough one not too far from here, but I’m pretty satisfied - pass me the sutures, time to tag and bag.

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That was gross, I’m so apologizing. 

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[whispers] I’m totes not. 😏

Hello, person who has read this far! See HERE for how to make an appointment with Dr. Nash.

[mittensmorgul]

Do you know of any instances in canon history where Dean's intuition has turned out to be wrong in a major way? Because it seems like we're going to start to see some answers to the "he was brainwashed" question since Jack flapped off and Dean still doesn't trust him.

Hrrrrm. This is a really difficult question, because like the Winchester Hunting Mindset, it’s not this black and white.

Like obviously of course he has and hasn’t, but extenuating circumstances. Context matters. Shades of grey, etc. etc.

Even all during s6 he fought against what his intuition was telling him about Cas, because he so wanted to believe in Cas. I mean, that’s a huge part of why he couldn’t forgive himself, or get over what Cas had done even by 7.17. He blamed himself for not pushing harder for answers, or maybe even for taking that whole year off with Lisa and trying to play normal

But aside from emotional overriding of what he’s got that bad feeling about, I can’t think of a single instance of his intuition being flat-out wrong.

Even in smaller ways, he’s typically right about the case stuff and Sam’s the doubter, but you specifically asked for if he’s been wrong in “a major way,” so I’m going to try and focus on The Big Issues. But again, the only instance I can think of right off the top of my head where he was stubbornly and blatantly wrong about a case was in 12.04– when he was absolutely convinced it was the social services lady who was a witch. Again, waves hello at Davy Perez, for absolutely nailing Dean’s immediate personal trauma and underscoring so many of his personal issues involving Mary’s fresh abandonment, his lifetime of likely run-ins with Family Services and well-meaning social workers, his parentification of Sam, his problematic relationship with John and the responsibility to hide the truth about their lives and protect Sam at all costs… which played right into the case they were working and colored his personal reactions. But again, extenuating circumstances…

Because of his personal issues with Mary and abandonment and the fact the social worker was openly admittedly a witch. Dean also got a very different impression of the family than Sam did (literally, he only had half the information to make his judgment on). He saw the father and son, the “happy families” side of the story where everything was presented to be done by their own choice, for positive family-bonding reasons in the wake of a personal tragedy. Meanwhile, Sam was in the house getting the skeevy third-person retelling of a first-person story by the mother, making it clear to us, who saw both sides of the story, that something was Definitely Fishy in that house. Meanwhile, all Dean could see after that encounter was that Sam had a bizarrely antagonistic reaction to a conversation he could only assume was nearly identical to the one he’d had outside.

This stark division, the reminder that they’d both had an entirely different experience in their respective interviews and thus come away with entirely different theories about the case, is highlighted as soon as they leave. Rather than sharing the reasons for their vastly different impressions and trying to figure out WHY they were given two entirely different impressions of this family, they each stubbornly stick to their guns. That was the entire POINT of this episode, on a meta level. And this lack of communication and understanding of the other’s entirely different experience and viewpoint and insight, Sam’s entirely unprepared for the entire family to be “in on the secret” and Dean’s bowled over to discover the social worker was nothing like she’d appeared to be on the surface.

And as soon as he saw the other side of the story, he instantly figured it out

So that’s the one glaring exception to Dean’s instinct, and it essentially works as an “exception that proves the rule,” because of the meta nature of the reasons he was “wrong” about the social worker.

That brings me to Dean’s role in the overarching narrative of the entire series. He’s the emotional POV for the audience. We’re supposed to ride along with him and even when he’s wrong he’s right. I know this bothers some people, and for some this is a major reason that they just don’t like Dean as a character. But most of the time, he’s the barometer for how the audience is supposed to react and feel and interpret the entire narrative.

We know Dean lies professionally, and is therefore an unreliable narrator, but we’re also given to understand that we’re still supposed to be “on his side” because he’s our emotional POV.

Whether he’s 100% right about Jack puppeting Cas or not doesn’t matter to me, so much as Dean’s reading of it being presented as the correct reading. Whether Jack meant to or not or whatever… (and we have ample evidence that most of what happens with his power is not something he does consciously, but that doesn’t mean he’s not subconsciously doing this stuff anyway), Dean’s read was the presented “main” reading and the events seemed to match it.

But I would argue Dean’s less right than 100%, but not more than 50% wrong. (the 50% being powers vs Jack himself doing it, i.e. the bit he’s partly “wrong” about is his assumption of any sort of intent on Jack’s behalf) and there will be a REASON he is wrong if he is which would necessarily justify his reading.

The fact that DEAN believed in the sock-puppeting, and the fact that JACK believes that it was a possibility, is what’s led directly to Jack’s current dilemma

Now that Cas is back, and he and Dean can finally (as he said in 12.23) “work through our crap,” theoretically he’ll be able to talk with Cas about all of that and try to understand Cas’s motives between 12.19 and 12.23. Unfortunately, Cas is also not objectively placed to talk about it, since it happened TO him and his emotional attachment to Jack /now/ is again a separate thing.

I fully believe he would have formed those same bonds with Kelly and unborn Jack in BETTER circumstances. Even if he’d gone back to the bunker with Sam and Dean as he’d already consented to do before the events at the sandbox. Arguably, it would’ve been a much safer and secure place for Jack to have been born, and for Dean and Sam to have come to understand the larger circumstances at play here.

As it is, Jack or his powers just made it happen for sure. Because of Dean’s stated concern that Cas wasn’t under his own control there, it renders anything Cas would have to say about it moot, because we can’t trust his objectivity. Because of Dean’s stated pov opinion on it.

Cas’s innate goodness and kindness vs his issues with protecting people/being a guardian angel/wanting a win all would lead him to care for Jack, and to feel responsible for caring for Jack, even if Jack’s powers hadn’t become a mitigating factor. I mean that’s why Kelly “picked him” to be Jack’s guardian in the first place. She (or Jack’s power) could plainly see Cas’s “goodness” in direct contrast to Dagon’s “badness.” He was even wavering about his orders to kill Kelly and Jack a few times IN 12x19, but he got pushed over the edge hard. This was not a gentle nudge or a moment of genuine character realization.

In the span of one glowy-golden-eyed sock puppeting (and that part is NOT up for debate, Jack’s power literally took Cas’s hand and used him to destroy Dagon), he went from “Jack must die and go to heaven before he’s born” to “Jack must be born with all his power at all costs” with no logic in between. We didn’t see his process on screen, and "he’s powerful enough to make me zap a knight of hell" is not good enough reasoning.

This was arguably the first instance of Jack’s power trying to do something good (killing Dagon) while having drastically unanticipated consequences (Joshua’s death, Dean being injured, the Colt being destroyed, and Cas abandoning his stated mission to take Kelly to Heaven so that Jack could be born with all his power). His power had already resurrected Kelly and thereby saved Jack, and that had caused cosmic alarm bells to ring in Heaven, providing the homing beacon Kelvin used to locate Kelly in the first place.

If anything it should be more concerning that he has that much power before he’s ever born. That firmly demonstrated his self-defensive instinct that we’ve seen trigger his power repeatedly since he’s been born.

After his power ~does the thing~ he doesn’t even seem to understand that he’d done anything. Like waking Cas up in the empty. Or the fact that his power resurrected Kelly when she’d killed herself, and yet he has no concept that he probably could’ve resurrected the guard he’d accidentally killed in 13.06 in the same way. Jack still is in a stage where he has to WANT to do things and I think understanding the guard is dead was too final to realize he COULD bring him back.

He seems to just ~do stuff~ with his power, not realizing it, and then later once he realizes he CAN, he attempts to do it deliberately– like the whole “throw people around” thing he seems to have perfected so he can do it without killing the rest of TFW at the end of the episode. I mean, the previous time he’d pulled that trick led to the circumstances he was terrified would happen ~without him intending harm~ but being unable to stop it from happening anyway. And yet he still did the Force Throw thing.

Then again, his INTENT when he was throwing that power at Dave the Ghoul was to kill/maim/injure… but he clearly has a lower setting on it and wasn’t afraid to use it on Sam, Dean, and Cas before flapping off, immediately after stating his reasoning for leaving being his desire NOT to hurt them…

He’s so highly conflicted about his OWN relationship with his powers that HE HIMSELF thinks of them as a tool and not inherently a part of himself. Right now his powers are literally acting like the man behind the curtain, and everything Dean’s witnessed with his own eyes has confirmed his initial impression that Jack’s powers are Not Trustworthy.

Over the course of the first six episodes of the season, Dean’s gotten to know Jack //the human person// outside of his powers, and seen what he was struggling with, his self-loathing and self-doubt and fear and confusion, and knowing that Jack’s powers may have set up the circumstances that led to Cas dying but also led directly to Cas coming back… well, that proved Jack’s intent was good, but still doesn’t clear up the whole “my power does what it wants and damn the consequences” issue that brought them to this point in the first place.

It’s rather a moot point if it ever really had been true or not before 13.04, but Dean’s BELIEF that it was true influenced Jack’s belief about whether or not it was true, which led directly to Jack “calling out” for Cas in the Empty… sort of proving the mechanism by which his power acts without his conscious control, and extends a TERRIFYING amount of influence into realms were even God has no power to act. And he does it all without it even registering to him. So in that respect, yeah, Dean’s 100% right.

He’s right because that’s the function of his POV within the narrative itself. And again, I know that has the potential to piss people off, and it’s kind of a hard fact to swallow sometimes, but unless the narrative explicitly proves Dean’s intuition wrong, we’re supposed to trust Dean’s assertions. And so far I’ve seen nothing to contradict this one.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Kinda fell off the grid with Crippling Arm Pain for a couple of days and watched Asylum, Scarecrow, Faith, Route 666 and the first half of Nightmare in a haze of "ow ow ow ow" and I don't have a whole lot to say about them and their individual moments that relates to season 12 that we haven't already said when anything relevant happened at the time IN season 12 while it was airing...

This whole section of season 1 though, makes a shift in Dean and Sam's dynamic which I think is where they drew most of the angst from for like, the rest of the show, and as usual I'm still obsessed with 12x22 and that very specific message of Sam leading and Dean stepping back and letting him do it. And very specifically where that came from and how as a reversal of season 1 in some ways back to the pilot, Sam gets walked back out of what he gets walked into over these episodes.

Sam perpetually comes back to the sort of "you have to let me grow up" thought like in season 5 & 8 ESPECIALLY off the top of my head before 12, although I think 3 was as well in response to knowing Dean would die, and tbh kicked off the entire arc from 3-5. So yeah, it's been a lot of Sam's lingering feeling about Dean and their dynamic and in 12x22 we see another gesture which I don't think (apart from the endless IMPLICIT trust of just working with Sam every friggin' NORMAL day of the week treating him like an equal when this ISN'T a plot thing) we've had aside from Swan Song, in terms of Big Symbolic Okay You Are An Adult Now Seriously How Are We Still Doing This Plot Oh Right Season 8 Needed Old Angst Warmed Up On All Fronts moments.

(Uh, sorry, I'll pick a fight with Carver about the laziness of season 8 character arcs on my own time because everyone else likes that season and generally it seems the show did well re: audience response to going back to basics and rehashing multiple seemingly resolved character arc things instead of going somewhere new :P Long post 99.9% not about that last thought AT ALL under the cut)

Anyway! In the first part of season 1, Sam is with Dean to find John. And he passes it off as a road trip to anyone who asks, and John is the thing keeping Sam from just meeting up with him and they charge off father & son guns blazing revenge mission - he's disappeared, and then sends them on another hunt when they catch up to where they lost him, also on a hunt he makes them take on his behalf.

For a few episodes Dean can fob Sam off about going to work cases while they look for John but he already kinda knows, then at the end of Phantom Traveller it's confirmed for them that John changed his answer phone to redirect to Dean, and the family business is now his. For Dean that's just like, welp, I'll shoulder THAT burden for my family too, no problem, already got a whole crushing weight there anyway hahaha. 

For Sam that makes it a lot more complicated, that John doesn't WANT to be found and he's now effectively trapped with Dean working the job while trying to convince him John is more important, and Dean is convinced John’s orders are more important.

Bloody Mary doesn't have any real resistance to doing the case, and Sam's preoccupied with visions & Jess's death still, so I think his head is still spinning about what he's actually doing and the case doesn't help settle him AT ALL. In Skin, he's the one who makes them backtrack for a personal thing which turns into a case, and he learns the crappy lesson that he can't have normal friends and essentially sees that Dean feels like a friendless freak even if he pretends this is all cool and part of the job, but rather more focus on Sam as the rebellious child being dragged back into the awful family and his own sense of sacrificing normality for the job & revenge from his perspective (looking ahead to how this bubbles over). Hook Man, he offers token protests to doing the case while we start with him obsessing over finding John, and in Bugs it starts with Sam checking for cases in the newspaper while Dean hustles - we know from Bloody Mary Sam has Dean's money and he really is freeloading as a road trip not just in what he keeps telling everyone, but that Dean is allowing him to stay at a careful remove from feeling like he's actually just doing the job again.

Bugs also has all the good family stuff where we finally have Sam and Dean rehash the trauma of Sam leaving, as of course this is all open wounds to them because Sam left and they don't see each other again until the Pilot, so this is a needed and much-delayed conversation directly addressing for the first time not just on screen but ever, between them about Sam going to college and how HE felt in the family, like the outcast who wanted to be normal, and he gloms onto Matt who is having similar issues with his dad that baffles Dean about why Sam relates to it so much. 

They're still going over early childhood > Sam leaving stuff in their dynamic and Sam really IS the kid brother on a road trip, and he is treated that way by the narrative in a lot of ways like this (also as in Sam sees this as a distraction and John and revenge is the real story/job/mission so hanging with Dean is as useful as road tripping :P I don’t think it’s just a cute excuse he uses over and over), probably up to Home, where it all starts getting more personal and real. 

Sam gets to see Mary with his own eyes for the first time, and they have a bit more of a sense of being in it together and Sam being inducted into the family mythos, revisiting stuff that was very very abstract to him, and for a multitude of intents - writerly from the show and from Chuck and his "narrative symmetry" and the motives from the demons who conspired to kill Jess, that needed to happen to Sam to make it more real to him (in the same way Dean felt all along about Mary dying because that pain didn't go away just because it had been a long time. The point is NOT what Sam says that Dean doesn’t know how it feels - it’s that SAM didn’t but it’s fresh and awful and despite growing up surrounded by grief, fancy learning coping mechanisms from John? Hence, follows in his footsteps, revenge-obsessed).

Anyway! Asylum changes their dynamic now - Sam is beginning to be openly frustrated even before John sends them a case that Dean's dragging him around on the job when they should be getting revenge, and I think he's now still sort of road tripping until the end of the season because of his speech in Shadow about being a person again, and the flip only being demonstrated in 2x02 that he now is the one more dedicated to hunting and doing the job. 

And during Asylum Sam vents to the psychiatrist under the guise of complaining about his road trip, presumably similar stuff but less murdery to what he yells at the end, and there's a whole thing with him being annoyed the kids think Dean is his boss. The fight continues in Scarecrow with Dean standing up for being a good soldier - I mean son - and Sam stomps off to find John. 2 episodes in a row he uses the road tripping excuse to vent about being stuck in close quarters with Dean bossing him around when he meets Meg and vents to her as well, but he has his realisation about family when Dean is in trouble and goes back.

After that he's immediately smacked with Faith, which is the first challenge one of them has of the other dying, and to which Sam has to save Dean at any close. His characterisation in this whole first chunk reminds me of season 10 Sam a great deal as I’ve recently rewatched it too (he has a "where's my brother!?" line in Skin which has like, the exact same delivery as 10x01's opening, among other little things which stood out to me) but this one episode in particular... Because he does save Dean, at a great cost, even having some very ominous-for-season 10 discussion about the evil black magic spell book and the desperation of Sue-Ann to bring Roy back, all of which made me laugh bitterly when I came through here on my post-season 10 rewatch, because it was pretty much word-for-word Sam's season 10 all in one episode, right down to the freakin pothole in Nebraska.

I think it's interesting Sam is the first one to make an ethically dubious/bad choice to save Dean (dubious since he didn't know it was bad, bad because he doubled down on it after - also looks much worse with at least 10 more years of canon rather than in the immediate moment it's just a bit edgy :P) while in season 2 Dean saves Sam selflessly and after a whole season of feeling brought back against the natural order (something I think is only exacerbating how he already felt since Faith and finding out what Sam did for him). 

I think this is a way to tie Sam deeply into the family and make him prove he'd go so far for Dean after all his rebellion and anger at Dean, with Dean represented as the boss and the good son/older brother, that Sam isn't actually going to really stomp off any time soon. He takes several strong lessons in a row about family and reconciliation, starting with the mirror family in Bugs and like, every episode after that except in Asylum because it abuts Scarecrow and is an ongoing emotional arc one starts and the other resolves, again proving to Sam he was wrong and being with Dean and doing the job is more important than revenge. (For now - he still has this choice all season and makes a false analysis for easy conclusion to the story by the writers that Dean's all he has left and he doesn't know where John is, even though they only just talked to John for the first time to get solid proof he's alive, AND Sam thought he knew where he was for the first time as well and only didn't go there because of going back to help Dean).

That all shifts Sam's dynamic from a fairly equal partnership, where Sam was kind of along for the ride, but without being strictly tied into the family business because he was road tripping, he was basically like... a support hunter Dean took with him to not work alone, just, you know, the best hunter Dean knew for the job :P And that changes after the midseason to really make Sam ductaped firmly back into the family business. But once he's there, Dean goes from equal partner to older brother who is ALSO his boss in Sam's eyes (even though Dean's really just desperately following John's orders, and is the one fighting in general for the family business to continue, in an a-political way about Sam's role in it, just that Sam sees him deciding things and feels like it is Dean ordering him around... They have issues about it, basically :P), and once Sam reconciles with THAT he does ethically sketchy stuff to save Dean and doesn't regret it, which is more of a blood pact thing to reaffirm commitment and loyalty.

In Route 666 Dean calls the shots, and Sam plays a trust game with the church thing so they both get in a power play of sorts and Sam teases Dean the entire time about Cassie...

(But this is all Buckleming characterisation, which I tend to find completely backwards, and thanks to watching with my mum, I went from 1x13 to 10x03, and remembered I still want to write a tooth-grinding post about their characterisation because something about it really sets my teeth on edge specifically about Sam and it just occurred to me watching 10x03 that that was how they wrote him in 1x13 and it was vaguely justified there because specific scenario but like... is that just their impression of who Sam is? Anyway in 10x03 there's lines he could have said seriously or whatever but there's like, a Buckleming Face Sam has/Jared uses and it makes me massively intrigued to know wtf tone suggestions they put in their scripts because almost without fail Sam only acts like this in their episodes and the grimace Jared uses delivering their Sam dialogue, even relatively inoffensive lines, is like at least a full 30% of why their episodes make my teeth grind because wtf he never does it in any other episodes with any other writers, it's like he has a separate personality to play Buckleming!Sam?? This is all massively beside the point except to say on realising that I decided that I just cba to analyse that one for personal arc stuff :P)

And in Nightmare, Sam's back to a sort of subordinate role in the power dynamic because he has to prove to Dean his visions are real (I think Dean totally believes him he just really really badly doesn't WANT them to be real but it means Sam spends the first 10 minutes needlessly arguing his case wanting to be believed) and then at the end Dean coddles him with a protective you've got me you'll be fine speech, which again puts himself in the role of protector to Sam.

I feel like from here on out their dynamic is hashed out a bit more firmly with all these specific things having happened in relation to all the main arcs - Sam's powers, the family business, John, Sam n Dean, saving each other from death, the whole lot, which as I said up the top, OBVIOUSLY day-to-day they still act very equally and usually, unless plot reasons, have 100% equal trust on cases and work side by side very well. But long-term, I can see a LOT of character stuff settling on Sam that becomes his pattern of thinking (e.g. the stuff in Asylum & Scarecrow especially betraying how he feels as the younger brother being bossed around) that in the first handful of episodes at least up to Home wasn't an issue or a part of their dynamic and they were going for a brothers on a roadtrip vibe without a lot of these Dire Obligations or Life And Death Pacts and so on.

I think Sam hasn't really been able to get out of this because season 5 was supposed to resolve it, but season 6 and 7 have something constantly wrong with him until Cas fixes him for good, so Dean spends a great deal of Gamble era having to deal with each new thing that happens to Sam, frequently acting with power of attorney to fix him and get his soul back etc for his own good. Sam has a blissful free space in his life from 7x17-7x23 and got to work equally and fairly and without any massive interpersonal drama or whatever with Dean (though for most of season 7 after they reconcile say from 7x09 onwards they have one of their best dynamics with the least interpersonal drama once they let go the Amy fight), and then Carver takes over and gives Sam 1 more year or so of recovery off-screen only to smash it all up with a sledgehammer and regress him all the way back to how bad he was in 8x23... Which we’ve been recovering from for all the characters ever since.

Anywho I said I wasn't going to get all obsessed about that, but the point is that watching season 1 and knowing where Sam is going to be coming from in season 12 about his own personal growth and how HE views it, I can see some interesting stuff because a lot of season 1 is Sam VOICING how he feels about their dynamic, job and lives, because it's the exposition season to get us involved in their lives and there's a lot of telling and explaining hot they feel about this that and the other. Knowing how Sam says he didn't want to lead and so on, his original issues with leadership was that he felt he had a mind of his own and Dean didn't and he didn't WANT to be bossed around by Dean, and to do his own thing. And season 1 subsumes him into the family business, and it leaves me thinking about the ever-relevant 10x05, and how the line about John in "The Road So Far" was that he took away their free will.

I sort of feel like watching season 1, you can see Sam giving ground over and over again in these fights. I know there's more to come, but the important flip next is in 1x16 where it stops being Sam swinging against Dean's position in the family, and goes back to Sam vs John, where it stays for the rest of the season and of course ending in 2x01 with John leaving them on a fight and 2x02 Sam having given himself over to the job and not really getting a break from then on to even dream of something normal until he hit a dog... 

So that's all totally different territory in season 1 because there wasn’t much/any Sam vs John stuff in season 12 that I can think of (idk if sharp-eyed Sam fans caught a narrative about it I didn’t see making its way onto my dash), so I think I've watched the parts now which exposition most clearly how Sam ends up essentially following Dean into the family business and in the main arc stuff seeing himself as still being the kid brother being bossed around and made to do it somewhat against his will to have a normal life even if as I say, in general unless this point is being made, Dean rarely if ever acts like this towards Sam and Sam seems to have all the freedom he likes to call the shots in their dynamic because Dean will totally trust him with all the normal parts of their job without being precious about taking his lil brother into fights...

Obviously there’s a hell of a lot more intervening trauma and I think Carver era does a LOT to Sam to beat him down from a relatively balanced, happy-with-himself-and-the-universe place so to actually trace WHY Sam felt like he did in 12x22 you’d start at 8x01 and begin counting THERE, but looking at season 12 through a season 1 lens is really interesting to me.

[semirahrose]

The Winchester Brothers and “Starvation Eating”

And why the theory that Dean has been starved (inevitably followed by the assumption that Sam has obviously been well-fed his entire life) is not adequately supported by canon or by published studies of the short or long-term effects of starvation—but that was too long to put in the title.

So someone reblogged my post on Sam’s eating habits to add a link to their own analysis, which made some wonderful points but also some that I strongly disagree with and needed to talk about. In short, their analysis implied that Dean showed evidence of having been starved as a child and Sam didn’t and that Sam’s eating issues and need to control what goes into his body are somehow evidence of class issues, which I don’t think is the primary cause.

I won’t be addressing the second bit, since I sorta made my case here (and foolscapper wrote some amazing analysis here), but I freaking need to talk about the way-too-common and unfounded assumption that Dean starved (usually “for Sam”). Not only is that a selective and way too narrow interpretation of canon, but the “evidence” people use to support the starved!Dean theory often contradicts canon and/or published studies on the effects of starvation.

BUT before I begin, anyone who has also heard “evidence” that the discrepancies in the brothers’ heights implies that Dean starved should read this awesome blogger’s great rebuttal.

Okay, back to eating.

All the pieces of analysis I’ve seen that claim Dean starved for Sam use one or all of these things to justify their conclusions: 

The fact that Dean likes to eat, talks about food, and tends to eat quite a bit, which people assume is related to past starvation.

That scene in “Something Wicked” where Dean gives Sam the last of the Lucky Charms.

That time in 4.04 when Travis the hunter asked Dean if he’s ever been really hungry, “like, haven’t-eaten-in-days hungry?” and Dean sorta smiles and says, “Yeah!” 

But let’s take a look at those one at a time.

Yes, it’s true that people who have experienced starvation display increased thoughts about food. They tend to eat a lot more, and often hoard food. A closely monitored experiment tried to test the short-term effects of starvation on a group of 36 men, and while the men started out active and healthy, their moods, mental health, and behaviors quickly deteriorated. Behaviors like the ones mentioned above did persist in the weeks after the “semistarvation” (as in, they decreased calorie intake by around half). But the “majority of participants” reported that those behaviors associated with starvation were drastically reduced after 5 months, and after 8 months, most of the participants, with a few exceptions, had completely returned to normal eating habits. In fact, another published study looked ahead far longer than 8 months. Over 50 male and female Holocaust survivors participated in a study and survey of how their eating habits had been affected long-term by severe starvation. Their results, personally reported and independently verified by the participants’ families, were not significantly different from the data gathered from the control group. While Dean does eat a lot and think about food, those are some of the only things he has in common with survivors of starvation. So it is absolutely correct to say that Dean has some things in common with people who have been starved, but it is not at all accurate to assert that he “eats like someone who’s been starved,” especially since the behaviors the meta writers cite would likely not persist that long and could easily be influenced by other factors. I’m not saying both Sam and Dean don’t show symptoms/haven’t shown symptoms of children who suffer from food insecurity, but I am saying that these published studies don’t bear out these people’s assertions, and canon doesn’t have near enough evidence to definitively state that either brother “starved.” Absolutely, it’s likely that they’ve been hungry, but that’s as far as we can go.

As @queen-of-carven-stone pointed out, Dean threw away perfectly good and relatively nutritious/filling SpaghettiOs. That is not the behavior of someone who has starved. Even after the starvation experiments I linked to above, some participants hoarded food and ate several times their daily allowance for calories. When people use this to imply that Dean starved for Sam, it just doesn’t hold water. Hiding the last of the Lucky Charms is not hoarding. It’s being human and wanting to stash things so your siblings can’t get to them. If Dean took the SpaghettiOs and ravenously consumed them when Sam rejected them, people might have some basis for a case for starved!Dean, but that’s not what happened. Considering how lightly both Sam and Dean handled the subject of food in that scene, it doesn’t seem like either of them were starving. Also, some people point to Bad Boys, where Dean stole things for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and got caught... but they forget that Dean only stole because he gambled their food money away at the card tables. Dean was obviously trying to do what he thought was best, and he clearly did what he could to care for Sam when he was younger, but he was far from the self-sacrificing, semi-starved white knight some fans try to paint him as.

That quote from 4.04 gets bandied around quite a bit, but please watch the clip rather than reading the transcripts. For anyone who wants to check it out, the relevant conversation starts around 19:30 and goes until 20:00 in the episode.  It’s nothing like people make it out to be. The way Dean answers the question is not solemn or dramatic, haunted-eyed as he recalls starvation. He responds enthusiastically, nearly smiling. Jensen is a fantastic actor. If he’d wanted us to see pain there, we would have. I’m not saying that Dean hasn’t experienced hunger--obviously he has been hungry, but that could range from actually having not eaten for days because there was no food, to not eating anything but canned beans and peanut butter for a few days while hunting a werewolf, to working up an intense appetite on a hunt, to having a wild sex marathon and becoming dehydrated, to being constantly hungry and having a bottomless pit for a stomach when he was going through puberty (I’ve watched two brothers do it), to straight-up hyperbole. Some seem more likely than others to me, and “Dean has actually and repeatedly been starved (for Sam’s sake)” simply isn’t one of them.

Some additional bits that didn’t fit above:

But don’t people who experience starvation make weird food combinations. What about all the weird things Dean added to Mac’n’Cheese? Sure, that’s true. But as one of five siblings raised by a single parent in a crappy trailer without heating or air conditioning (or running water or electricity, though we made do without) on $12,000 a year... we also made weird food combinations, but it wasn’t because we were starving. (We also were responsible for making most of our own food from when we were pretty young, but there was usually a 5 gallon pot of something in the fridge--chicken noodles or spaghetti or something...but that stuff gets old fast, lemme tell ya.) We had food, but there wasn’t always great variety and it wasn’t always things we liked to eat, so we added cheese and tons of other things to ramen noodles to make them new and exciting. So I might consider the possibility that the varieties of Mac could be evidence of food insecurity or even inadequate knowledge of nutrition or a typical kid’s desire to make the same-old fare new, but there’s just not enough there to say that anyone “starved.” Also, while people are using Dean’s culinary weirdness to justify him starving, they forget that Sam often had to make his own meals (5.06) and--of all things in the world--craved marshmallow nachos as a kid (11.08). If people want to say that Dean’s varieties of Mac’n’Cheese are evidence of starvation, it’s funny that they ignore “evidence” of the same for Sam.

But Dean’s still more likely to have not had food than Sam! Not necessarily true? In fact, while Dean and John were out hunting, Sam was left alone in motel rooms for multiple days and expected to travel alone across multiple states to meet them (11.08). He was 9 at the time, but the episode made it clear that he may have been left (alone) since Sam was 5. Sam also mentioned in 11.19 that, during those times when he was alone, he was terrified that John and Dean were dead and tried to figure out what he’d do if they were gone and wasn’t in the state of mind to do so. This is totally speculation, but I think it’s reasonable: it strikes me as unlikely that he’d be making himself balanced, nutritious meals while he was entertaining those thoughts. In fact, season 1 makes it clear that Sam, grieving Jess’s death and worrying about his own nature, barely eats or sleeps. Again, I’m speculating, but it doesn’t take a huge leap to wonder if those habits were formed in childhood. 

So, sure. Sam and Dean may not have had a terribly secure food situation, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have enough food. As an exception to that prevalent assumption, I felt the need to speak out. Growing up without much money didn’t mean that my family lacked for food. It just meant that the variety available to us was limited. Not saying that’s how things went for the Winchesters, but assuming they starved is just as presumptuous as assuming otherwise (and I feel like the flashbacks reveal that they usually had something to eat... and maybe sometimes they didn’t, but if someone wants to call that fact, they need a lot more than what they have.

I will buy malnourished!Winchesters every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I still have cracks in my teeth from obsessively eating ice as a kid. (Yay, iron deficiency!!) But assuming Dean starved and did so for Sam, who ate at the cost of Dean’s health... is at best an indulgent fanon theory and at worst a gross misinterpretation of canon and information widely available about starvation.

Okay haha rant over. I’m not a professional in this area, so take this with a few grains of salt. It’s just that stuff like that bothers me. People are welcome to cradle their headcanons all they want, but they’re still headcanons.

more meta

[whispersandwhiskerburn]

When She’s Gone

Summary: Dean is lost when the Reader leaves him. She never stays, and he doesn't know how to make her do so. Pairing: Dean x Reader. Reader is absent though (see the title)--most of this is in Dean’s head with Sam coming in at the end for a conversation. Word Count: 2,782 Warnings: Angsssst! Insecure Dean is trying/failing to deal with abandonment issues—and he's borderline depressed because of it. Canon style. Author's Note: This was written for @thing-you-do-with-that-thing‘s  SPN Anti-Valentine's Challenge for the song “Ain't No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. This was done in Dean's POV which I have only tried a few times, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I started with inspiration from a blurb I had previously written and went from there. There's a lot of build up till the reader comes in, canonically correct flashbacks in Dean's memory. Be patient. The Dean x Reader part will show up. Tags: My forevers are below the read more, but the following fabulous friends voted for this fic in particular in my Pick the Fic post, so here you go! @feelmyroarrrr, @beckawinchester, @wi-deangirl77, @avasmommy224, @xtina2191, @ruprecht0420, @death2thevirgin, @autopistaaningunaparte, @dancingalone21, @rissbennett, @salvachester, @lipstickandwhiskey, @paintrider13-blog, @mamaredd123, @spn-and-daddy-issues, @deanwinchesterforpromqueen, @wevegotworktodo, @angelofwinchester17,  @wildfirewinchester, and @fandommaniacx.

Dean had experience with being left behind.

He had been four years old when Mom had burned. He had been old enough to understand, sitting on the trunk of the impala, watching his home burn and Dad cry while holding Sammy. He didn't know why or how, but he knew Mom had left and wouldn't be coming back.

Dad used to leave sometimes—even before...that night. But he always came back. And mom was always there.

But that night, Dad was crying, and Mom wasn't there—and Dean, even at four years old, knew she never would be again.

His Mom had left him.

Then his voice left him. He knew what was happening, saw his Dad trying to cope, but mostly drinking, stumbling from place to place. He tried to take care of Sammy, but Dean didn't want to talk. Not to Dad, not to anyone.

Then, when he got older and started talking again, started really paying attention to his Dad, the only parent he had left, Dad started leaving more often.

He'd be gone, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week, and he'd come back  bruised, or bloody, or drunk. He'd write in his journal, drink, check on him and Sammy, then pass out before leaving again.

Dean figured out about hunting soon enough—Dad had started to become paranoid as he learned more and more of what was out there, so he started training Dean. Sammy was getting old enough to start training too, but Dean tried to keep him out of it. He didn't want Sammy to know how to make a silver bullet, how to shoot someone in the head, or why there was always salt spread at the doors of the hotel rooms.

He just wanted Sammy to be a kid.

Sometimes he fought with Dad over it—but never for long. Dad might never have stuck around much, but even he could see that this type of darkness was changing his family, and he didn't want to do that to Sammy either.

Then Sammy found out. He was old enough now that Dean was having to fight both Dad and Sam to try and keep Sam out of training. He considered it a win when he got Sam stuck on researching duty. The kid was good at it, and he wanted to help so bad...but most importantly, it kept him safe. It kept him out. When Dean had to leave with Dad to help with a hunt, he wanted to make sure that Sam would be there when he came back.

And no matter how scared Dean got when he left to hunt some monster or ghost when he was a teenager, he always knew he had to get back. He was never going to leave Sammy.

No one deserved to get left behind.

One time, Sam ran away. It was one of the worst times in Dean's life—not knowing what had happened, how he had lost him. Dean looked everywhere, frantic, terrified of what could have happened.

When Dad got home and heard what had happened, it was...it was like he dropped the role of Dad. He was nothing but a hunter in that moment—cold, purposeful, ruthless.

It had scared Dean. But not as much as having Sam leave him.

They found him again, but Dean had a hard time trusting him to stay after that. Dad had come back that time, but not Sam. There was a distance between them after that. Dean stopped worrying about keeping Sam out of the business, and started throwing himself into the business more.

Maybe that's why he hadn't seen the Stanford acceptance coming.

He hadn't even known Sam had applied—his own brother hadn't even told him that.

The argument that night, Sam screaming that he wanted to leave, that he wanted out of this life, Dad calling him a traitor, running out on his family, telling him that if he did, he should never come back.

Dean hadn't known what to do. He didn't want Sam to go, but he didn't think Dad was right either.

Why couldn't they just stay together? Why did they always have to fight? What was wrong with his family—with him, that no one ever wanted to stay with him?

Sam left.

Dean and John hunted together for the years he was gone, and every time they had a case in California, they'd stop by and check on him. He was fine—safe, out of the life, doing well in school.

They never let on that they were there. Sam never called or looked for them.

He never seemed to miss Dean at all.

Dean tried to take comfort in the fact that Sam was out and safe, but it was just another abandonment—and this one hurt more than any other had. He had raised Sammy, and to have him walk out and never look back....

But then Dad went silent on a hunt.

No calls. No check ins. No message, no sign, no nothing.

Dean had been a hunter long enough to know that this was something different than the usual silence, to know that something was really wrong. He couldn't face this alone—he didn't want to face this alone.

He went to Sam. Dad had been in California, but there was no sign of him around Stanford. If Dad was missing, Sam should help Dean find him. He was still a Winchester, even if he wasn't a hunter anymore.

Then Jess.

And Dean was left with a broken, tortured Sam. He tried to help, tried to guide, but how do you help someone who just watched the person they love burn to death on a ceiling? He hadn't been able to heal his father of that wound in the last 22 years, and now Sam was going through the same thing, and Dad wasn't there, and Dean didn't know what to do.

Except look for Dad.

So that's what they did.

The found him. And for just one brief moment—a scary, tragic, but shining moment, Dean had both his brother and his father back in his life.

And then his Dad abandoned him again.

This time, he left for him—did a deal with a demon to bring Dean back. But how was Dean supposed to deal with that? His father had gone to Hell, left him forever with the knowledge that the only reason he was walking around on the Earth was because his father was burning down below.

He tail-spun after that.

Sammy got him back.

The two of them worked together after that. Hunt after hunt, trying to save the world, trying to make it a better place, the way Dad would have wanted.

But then Sam died in Dean's arms, stabbed in the back.

And Dean...he couldn't. He just couldn't.

It was worse than Mom...worse than Stanford...worse than Dad.

Dad had made a deal to bring Dean back. Dean did the same for Sam.

When he died bloody beneath that Hell Hound—when he left Sam for good, or so he thought, Dean didn't regret making the deal.

As he suffered in Hell, he was thankful that Sam wasn't the one beneath the blade.

When he started torturing souls, he was glad that Sam wasn't there to see it.

And then he was back. Sam was different, and the world was crazy—the apocalypse was happening and angels were real, and one of them had dragged him out of Hell.

It took Dean a while after he was back, in the midst of the craziness, to realize that Sam really was different. Colder, darker...and finally it connected. It was like John had been when Sam had run away that time.

It scared Dean.

He lashed out, blaming Sam, blaming that bitch Ruby for poisoning him.

But it was too late.

Sam had left him for a demon, for his powers, and Lucifer rose.

That was a dark time. Dean didn't know whether or not he could trust Sam, could trust the angels, even Castiel who had saved him—so many people died. Jo and Ellen, their brother Adam...he almost gave up at one point.

He just couldn't take anyone else letting him down.

And what stopped him? The idea that he would be letting Sam down. That he would be abandoning him. Dean just couldn't do it.

So they fought. And they fought. And they saved the world—at a price.

Sam leapt into Hell with Lucifer inside him. Cass rebelled from Heaven for them and saved them all, brought Bobby back, and the world kept on spinning,  just the way it was supposed to.

But Dean was empty inside. He went to Lisa, because he had promised Sam he would. He did his best, smiling where he could, trying to raise Ben and make a life that was worth the sacrifice his brother had given.

But Sam had chosen to leave.

And it was like Dad all over again.

And there were moments, brief moments when the sun would peek out from behind the clouds, when he thought he could actually have a normal life. A home.

It didn't last though.

Sam came back—most of him. The life was right there waiting, with extended family members ready to betray him because he hadn't had enough of that in his life. Dean risked a conversation with Death to get Sam his soul back and it worked great—until Cass left them for Crowley.

He was such a child—he refused to listen to Dean. Dean could see the pattern all over again; it was Sam partnering with Ruby to stop Lilith—except this time it was Castiel partnering with Crowley to stop Raphael. He wouldn't listen and the same thing happened all over again—the fallout result was worse than what they were trying to destroy.

Lisa and Ben had to have their memories wiped.

Sam's mind broke, and he remembered his time in Lucifer's cage.

Castiel was dead and Leviathans walked the earth.

The ultimate monsters, and it was his best friend who was responsible. And Dean was left to clean up the mess because Castiel had done it all.

They lost Bobby.

Everyone dies or leaves and nothing Dean could do could stop it.

Kevin. Benny. Charlie. Garth. Rufus.

Sam abandoned him in Purgatory—never even looked for him.

God showed up and then left again.

Mom came back...and only stayed for about a week.

That one had nearly killed Dean. She had been the one person Dean had needed most. He had lost so many—some by their choice and others before their time, but his mom? He had built his whole life on the fact that his mother had been stolen from him, but in the end...she chose to leave too.

Even if he understood why, Dean couldn't help feeling like there just wasn't anything inside him that made the people he loved want to stay.

And then he met you.

It had been a hunt—a surprisingly small one compared to the end-of-the-world things that had been happening regularly over the last few years. Just a vengeful spirit in an old house that needed to be salted and burned and put to rest.

But it had rocked Dean to the core.

You had been there, at the grave site before Dean could get there. Sam was at the house, ready to move in in case there was any sign of danger for the family that lived there, and Dean had been surprised as hell to find you up to your calves in the grave he was supposed to be digging up.

It surprised him even more when you looked up at him, studied him and his shovel for a moment and simply asked, “hunter?”

“Winchester.”

You had nodded, then slid over for him to jump in and dig beside you.

“I'm Y/N. We'll do the rest of the pleasantries after Casper here is crispy, deal?”

Dean had jumped in and dug his shovel in. “Fair enough.”

Afterwards, you had gone out to eat with them. After the brothers were convinced you were who you said you were, they had invited you back to the bunker to crash. It was an hour away, but better than a skeezy motel room.

You had agreed.

Dean had been fascinated with you. He hadn't smiled much since Mom had left, but he laughed with you. It was like...well, sunshine.

But you didn't stay either.

You didn't have any real ties to them. Every month or so you would call, or Dean would, about a case and you'd team up and work together. After a few times, you ended up in Dean's bed and, while the sex was fantastic, Dean found himself wanting more.

But you never gave a sign that you did. In fact, you had left again the morning after before Dean was even out of bed.

You didn't shut off communication—you and Dean had even hooked up a few more times. You still laughed together, sang along to the same songs, and fought over who was the best shot on the firing range.

But when you were gone.

Dean moped. He drank. And he missed you.

Of course, he was used to being left behind.

He was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, drinking a beer and lost in thoughts of you when Sam pulled out the chair across from him and plopped into it.

Dean looked up with a glare. Sam had been annoyingly cheerful all day, and Dean had thought that he had made it clear that he didn't want company right now.

“Unless this is about a case, Lucifer, Castiel, or Mom, beat it.”

“None of the above.” Sam's voice was matter-of-fact and almost smug. Dean took another swig of his beer, wondering if he should just switch to something stronger.

“I've been wondering what has been making you act so weird, and I think I've figured it out.”

“Really. Enlighten me, please, Dr. Phil.” Dean's voice should have been enough warning for Sam to back off, but his little brother pressed on anyway. Pain in the ass.

“I thought it was about Mom, but it's not. You're upset about Y/N walking out.”

Dean schooled his face, pulling on his many hours of hustling poker to keep from ruining his bluff.

“And what makes you think that, Obi Wan?”

Sam raised an eyebrow then smiled a bit, “search your feelings, De--”

“Dude!” Dean protested, but Sam pointed a finger at him, saying, “you started the Star Wars reference, man.”

Dean grumbled a bit and took another drink, sad to find that he was almost empty.

“Seriously man, every time she leaves, you go into this weird depressed funk for days. You don't eat right, you drink even more than usual, and you're grumpy for no reason.”

Dean didn't meet his brother's eyes, trying desperately to avoid the truth.

“C'mon. Spill.”

Damn chick flick was what this was turning into.

“Fine, I miss her, okay? I've got feelings for her, but I don't think she does...and let's face it, I don't have the track record to press my luck.”

Sam nodded at that, a frown appearing on his face.

“There ain't no sunshine when she's gone, Sam, and she's always gone too long anytime she goes away.”

“She's a hunter, Dean. She leaves. But she comes back. She keeps coming back. I think that should tell you something.”

“I know, I know, I know....” Dean couldn't help how he felt, even if it wasn't logical. He knew she cared for him, but apparently it wasn't enough to make her stay.

“I just get tired of people leaving.” Dean sighed, “I mean, either they die or they walk out. Don't you ever wonder why everyone leaves, Sam? And with Y/N, it's worse than ever. Every time I wake up, she's left again, and I wonder this time where she's gone, wonder if she's gone to stay.”

“Dean, have you ever asked her to stay? Have you ever given her any reason to think that she's more than a friend with benefits thing?”

Dean glared at his brother again. He was officially done with this conversation.

Dean stood up, threw his bottle in the trash can and walked out of the kitchen, heading for his room, even though he knew that would only make it worse. Her scent was there, her memory was strongest in his room, his bed.

As he walked down the hallway, he couldn't help but to sing slightly under his breath, “this house just ain't no home anytime that she goes away.”

But Dean had experience with getting left behind.

Thanks for reading!

Did you like this? Check out my MASTERLIST! Feedback is life!

To my Forevers, the ones who keep me writing:

@2wonderinsighlents, @adaliamalfoy, @alcpegasus22, @andrastesflamingtitties, @angelofwinchester17, @alexastacio, @anokhi07, @ariethegreat98, @arryn-nyx, @autopistaaningunaparte, @avasmommy224, @bennyyh, @blackcatstiel, @bringmesomepie56, @bucky-thorin-winchester, @but-deans-back-tho, @casownsmyass, @cfordwrites, @chaos-and-the-calm67, @dancingalone21, @d-s-winchester, @deandoesthingstome, @deanscherrypie, @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog, @deanwinchesterforpromqueen, @deliciouslyshadowymilkshake, @demonangelimpala, @demondeansdomme, @faith-in-dean, @fandommaniacx, @feelmyroarrrr, @fiveleaf, @i-is-for-inspiring, @ilostmyshoe-79, @impala-dreamer, @jalove-wecallhimdean, @jencharlan, @jensen-gal, @jotink78, @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms, @katnharper, @kittenofdoomage, @kristaparadowski, @lipstickandwhiskey, @littlegreenplasticsoldier, @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid, @lunarsaturn88, @marilynnlew, @millaraysuyai, @moonstonemystyk, @mrsbatesmotel53, @mrsjohnsmith, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @notnatural-supernatural, @paintrider13-blog, @pinknerdpanda, @plaidstiel-wormstache, @rizlowwritessortof, @roxy-davenport, @rushernparadise, @salvachester, @scorpiongirl1, @skathan-omaha, @spnrvt, @supernatural-jackles, @supernaturalyobsessed, @theafinnerup, @thegreatficmaster, @torn-and-frayed, @vote-for-pedro, @waywardjoy, @wevegotworktodo, @wi-deangirl77, @withoutaplease, @writingbeautifulmen, @xtina2191, @yoursmilemakesmeloveyou,

If you want to be removed from or added to my forever tag list, send me a message/ask! Only 18+ please!!

[profoundnet]

Profound Member Post - October 2018

Header by @pantydean and is available on merch from her redbubble store. You can use all those fancy emojis(and more!) on our Discord Server!

The Masterpost is open for all creations by ProfoundBond members which are posted in entirety during that month.

MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS FOR OCTOBER 2018!

Masterpost below the cut.

Darmys - @darmysasagiri​ - Darmys

Not in Kansas Anymore

Summary: Sareno Dean Winchester answers to no one. Born to a powerful House on the storm wracked mining planet Kansas, he and his brother Sam have grown up strong and independent. The only person that holds their respect is the enigmatic Bobby Smith, Master of the martial arts academy where they train.

When alien bounty hunters kidnap Bobby, Dean throws away the life he knew and sets out—with Sam and Baby—to rescue his mentor, no matter how far they have to travel through known space.

Tags:  Alternate Universe - The Highroad Trilogy, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Past Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester, Past Dean Winchester/Nick Munroe, Robot!Baby, Canon-Typical Deaths, Canon-Typical Violence, Attempted Sexual Assault (Not Involving Our Main Characters), Period-Typical Racism, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2018

SFW

JessJesstheBest - @saywhatjessie​ - JessJesstheBest

Fucking Hollywood

Summary: 

“Okay…” he started, aware that the only way out of this conversation was through. “So I admit, I don’t know a whole lot about,” he gestured vaguely at Sam. “That. But me, personally, I have a hard time telling the difference between romantic and platonic love.” 

“So like aromanticism.” “No, what?” Dean glanced at Sam who was looking at him weirdly. “I don’t know. But one of the only ways I know how to confirm the difference is with sex.” Or the boys have a discussion about media theory and Dean learns a new word.

Tags: Fluff are!Dean, Bi!Dean (I mean obviously Dean is bi but he's actually explicitly aro in this so, Human AU, Sam's at Stanford, John is dead, Aromantic Dean Winchester, 

SFW

waywarded - waywarded

Discoveries

Summary: Dean and Cas are in a relationship and Dean is being too considerate for Cas's liking with making sure they don't take things too fast in the bedroom. Experimentation on what turns Castiel on ensues.

Tags: Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Romance, Fluff, Sexual Content, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Cute, Kissing, Making Out

NSFW

ultimatetrollcolinfirth - @ultimatetrollcolinfirth 

Destiel Art Round Up Oct 2018

Summary: A round up of my Destiel based creations, mostly for inktober. Tags: Destiel, Inktober 2018, 

Link to art piece #1, Link to art piece #2

SFW

ultimatetrollcolinfirth - @ultimatetrollcolinfirth - LeafZelindor

Dean’s Weakness

Summary: Profound Bot prompt Challenge

Dean just saw Cas getting out of the shower. Cas is Dean's win. Sam is likely a leviathan.

In which Creature Sam figures out some important information about Dean Winchester.

SFW

amandacanzo - amandacanzo

Sweet Surprise

Summary:  Dean is a great baker, but perhaps not the best communicator. When Dean had an embarrassing accident in his bakery (Sam’s fault), he left a lasting impression on Dr Castiel Novak, who had the pleasure of stitching up Dean’s asscheek.

When Cas comes to Dean’s bakery with Anna to order a wedding cake, Dean figures that Cas is getting married.

While Dean’s happy to have a new friend, it’s instantly clear to him he can’t keep his feelings in check. Especially when Cas is super affectionate and seems to be treating each hang out as a date.

On top of everything, Dean still has to make what he thinks is Cas’ wedding cake.

DCBB 2018

Tags: Baker Dean Winchester, Doctor Castiel, misunderstandings, angst with a happy ending, AU 

NSFW

Accompanying art by @abaddon-all-hope​

alessariel - alessariel

A Promise At Sunrise

Summary: “Dude, don’t look now, but there’s another guy wearing the same costume as you!” Charlie daintily sipped her drink while Dean nearly spat out his beer. What starts with a similar costume rapidly turns into the most amazing one-night stand Dean's ever had. Cas is funny, gorgeous, mysterious and really knows how to use his... wings. Among other things. Dean made Cas promise to stay the night and watch the sunrise with him, but he finds himself hoping that Cas will stay a lot longer than that.

Tags: Alternate Universe, Halloween, Creature Fic, Creature Castiel, Costumes, Smut, Fluff, A little bit of angst, just a tiny bit, Bottom Dean, Top Castiel, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester

NSFW

blueeyesandpie - @blueeyesandpie​

Destiel Gifset 

Summary: A gifset of key early-Cas moments that establish his loyalty/connection to Dean, set to the lyrics of Simon & Garfunkel's Kathy's Song.

Tags: dean winchester, castiel, gifsets, destiel, kathy's song, season 4, season 5

SFW

pingnova - @pingnova​ - pingnova

Don’t Kill The Messenger

Summary: Father Castiel Novak investigates miracles for the Vatican. While it’s disheartening when they all end up fakes, he continues his relentless pursuit in the name of faith and science. After a particularly convincing case in Brazil is taken from him, he’s reassigned to a believer in New York City who’s blessed with the wounds of Christ. Except, Dean Winchester turns out to be no believer, and he and Castiel have very different ideas of what constitutes a divine gift.

Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Hurt Dean Winchester, Priest!Castiel, Possession, Angst, Gore, Temporary Major Character Death

SFW

Accompanying art by SketchyDean

gouinette parle trop - @artbloggouinetteparletrop​ 

Collection of Fan Art Made Through SUPTOBERART 

Summary: MASTERPOST for the art I created during suptoberart 2018

Tags: destiel, destiel fan art, wayward sisters, suptoberart 2018, spn fanart

SFW

MalMuses - @malmuses​ - MalMuses

Something in the Fog

Summary: Finally settling into some semblance of normalcy after Cas comes back from the Empty, Sam finds a case up in New England. In one historic town, people are losing their minds and drowning themselves in a nearby river. Sam and Dean set off alone, only to quickly call Cas to their aid when they realize that the unnerving town of Dunwich is hiding far more than your average witch or ghoul. Drawn into investigating a cult that worships a being far beyond their comprehension, Team Free Will doesn’t understand quite how much danger they are in... Fic posted for SPN Eldritch Bang.

Tags: Dub Con (Possession), Further Clairification of Dub Con Tag in the Appropriate Chapter, Cults, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Miscommunication, Eldritch Horror, Angst with a Happy Ending

NSFW

MalMuses - @malmuses​​ - MalMuses

Without A Trace

Summary: When Sam disappears during a hunt gone horribly wrong, Dean and his angel Castiel follow a trail of clues that lead them back through Sam’s past. Will Dean be able to save Sam from his history – and will Cas be able to save Dean from himself? Nothing is a simple as it seems for Dean and Cas. Luckily, they have some great friends (and unexpected allies) willing to help them through it. (WIP fic that finished posting this month.)

Tags: Canon Verse, MCD (temporary), Slow Burn, Smut, Fluff, Plot Twists, Torture, First Dates, Drowning, Kidnapping, BAMF!Cas, Gabriel is a badass, Redemption Arcs, Friends to Lovers, Sharing a Bed, Hurt/Comfort, Wing Kink, Grace Sharing, Angel True Forms, Miscommunication, Angst with a Happy Ending

NSFW

MalMuses - @malmuses​​​ - MalMuses

Soup and Whiskey

Summary: “Jack, you know Dean and I, well, we’re not…” Cas spoke quietly, making an awkward, vague hand gesture. The raised eyebrow that Jack gave him came directly from Sam. Cas could see the developing bitch face and it was equal parts entertaining and alarming. “Really,” Cas confirmed. “We aren’t.” Jack put his spoon down slowly to pick up his juice. “Then you should be,” he responded easily, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. A little 14x03 coda.

Tags: 14x03 Coda, Jack ex machina, First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions

SFW

saltnhalo - saltnhalo

What The Rain Brings

Summary: In which Castiel's new roommate—supposed to be an alpha, under the guidelines of the college dorms—turns out to be a) late, and b) a beautiful, sarcastic, drenched omega.

Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Castiel (Supernatural), Omega Dean, Meet-Cute, True Mates, Scenting, Misunderstandings, Explicit Sexual Content, Topping from the Bottom, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Porn with Feelings

NSFW

The Sketching Fox - @sketching-fox​ 

My Little Destiel Collection

Summary: A Collection of 10 digital artworks, created during the SupToberArt /Inktober 2018, showing all posts about Destiel!  

Tags: Supernatural, Destiel, Castiel, Dean Winchester, SPNFanart, Spnart, suptober2018, suptoberart2018

SFW

Jdragon122 - @jdragon122​ - Jdragon122

Outlast

Summary: It seemed like a normal case. It always does... Dean has never seen Castiel, the real Castiel. But he’s never really thought about it until the truth of it is thrown in his face, abruptly, and violently. A case out in the deserts of Arizona and old Native American lands uncover a long dormant evil that reemerges when the brothers and the angel stumble upon it. The evil is hungry for power and what powerful being is more tempting than an angel. With Cas suddenly ripped from the brothers, stranded in the middle of the desolate wilderness, they must find a way to save their friend. With the clock ticking and their resources dwindling, Sam and Dean must find a way to defeat the evil and save Cas — before Cas becomes twisted beyond recognition, and before the hunters become the hunted.

Tags: Canon Divergent, Canon Conpliant, Canon-Typical Violence, season/series 11, Dark, Angst, Dean Whump, Cas Whump, Sam is okay though... mostly, Male OC, female OC, Angel True Forms, Castiel (Supernatural)’s True Form, Blood and Violence, very brief scene that might be considered noncon, graphic description of corpses, BAMF Castiel, BAMF Sam, BAMF Dean, switch Castiel, switch Dean, panic attacks, Case Fic, Hurt Dean, Hurt, angst with a happy ending, temporary character death, wings, topping from the bottom,

NSFW

BinJLG - @honeyedsam - BinJLG

Holloween

Summary: Dean spirals into a deep depression after casting Michael out and ends up isolating himself. But Castiel WILL NOT let him spend his favorite holiday alone.

Tags: Destiel, Dean Winchester/Castiel, Sam Winchester mentioned, Jack Kline mentioned, Mary Winchester mentioned, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal Ideation, Depressed Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Halloween, First Kiss, Depression, Mental Illness, Unreliable Narrator

SFW

Nera_Solani - @nera-solani​ - Nera_Solani

Show me your secrets and I’ll show you madness

Summary: Are you afraid of the dark? No?If you ever find a door that leads nowhere, don't go in. Four teenagers make the mistake of doing so anyway and don’t come back out. Which is how Dean, Sam and Castiel find themselves investigating a case that leads them right into an ancient Greek myth about a labyrinth housing a monster. But the monster isn't the only thing lurking in this dark place; the walls are breathing, watching, waiting… Being separated in a giant maze that isn’t attached to our reality isn’t how any of them had envisioned this case would go.

What is real? What is an illusion? Is that blood? What was that shadow? In every corner awaits a new nightmare, each one worse than the other. The three men need to save the missing teenagers and find a way out — if they can find each other, and live through the terrors the maze shows them. But none of that is easy when you’re being confronted with your worst memories and fears. Especially when you have to lose the love of your life over and over again… Well? Are you afraid of the dark? Maybe you should be.

Tags: Graphic depictions of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Blood and Gore, Injury, Post-Season/Series 13, Case Fic, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Illusions, Hallucinations, Temporary Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Fluff and Angst, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Idiots in Love, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Knows, Nearly Human Castiel, Grace Sex, DCBB 2018

NSFW

grumpyphoenix - @paintmeahero - grumpyphoenix

Glutton For Punishment

Summary: Castiel is trying out everything now that he's human. When he finds Dean's porn-stash, he wants to try some of it out, but Dean won't let him. So he has to goad Dean into it.

Tags: Kinktober 2018, Not Beta Read, Edgeplay, Dacryphilia, Spanking, Sadism, Masochism, Biting, Praise Kin,k Angry Sex, Bondage, Hair-pulling, Asphyxiation, Crossdressing, Costumes, Creampie, Under-negotiated Kink, Mildly Dubious Consent, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Jealousy, Human Castiel, Possessive Behaviour

NSFW

supernatural9917 - @supernatural9917fic​ - supernatural9917

We Eat in Here!

Summary: Sam is really sick of walking in on Dean and Cas boning. Written for the Destiel Smut Bingo. Square fill: Sam is scarred for life.

NSFW

supernatural9917 - @supernatural9917fic​ - supernatural9917

Doctor Doctor, Please

Summary: Dean has a special request of Cas Written for the Destiel Smut Bingo. Square fill: Playing doctor.

NSFW

supernatural99117 - @supernatural9917fic​ - supernatural9917

Roommate Wanted

Summary: Dean Winchester moved to Pontiac, Illinois six months ago when his girlfriend Carmen got a new job. Unfortunately for Dean, Carmen then left him for her boss, so he needs to find a roommate ASAP. Castiel Novak needs to move out of his brother’s house before his niece is born, and when he finds Dean’s ad on Craigslist, it seems like the perfect solution for both of them. So what if Dean is ridiculously gorgeous? Castiel can keep his crush under control. So what if Castiel is gay? Totally straight Dean isn’t at all affected by seeing him hook up with dudes. They’re just a couple of completely platonic roommates. Well… that’s what they think, anyway…

Written for the DeanCas Big Bang 2018 with art by @busysquirrel

NSFW

jscribbles - jscribbles

Taker of Souls

Summary: The angels have fallen. Castiel is human, Sam is recovering from the trials, and Dean doesn’t want to expose them to the world as it’s crumbling outside the bunker doors. To pass time in their solitude, Dean discovers a hidden room in the bunker full of dangerous magical artifacts and accidentally exposes his friends and family to an ancient horror. If Castiel thought adjusting to humanity was already a terror in itself, he experiences a world of pain when the ancient spirit Dean released chooses him as a vessel to fulfill its evil prophecy. Castiel begins to change as voices call out to him in the night and take the form of the one righteous man he desires, temptation drawing him to complete a ritual that will allow one of Hell’s most feared ancient entities to occupy his vessel. Before Sam, Dean, Kevin and Crowley know what is happening, they are thrown into a lockdown, unable to escape the bunker as the cruel, twisted monster inside of Castiel prowls the hallways, hunting them, thirsty for their blood, hungry for their souls.

Tags: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Castiel/Dean, temporary major character death, Minor Character Death, Pining, Slow Burn, non-con, dub-con, Blood, Gore, Body mutilation, Self Harm, zombie-type characters, Hallucinations, Nightmares, horror-imagery, offensive language/insults, spoilers for The Witch, the boys cry, Sickness, Possession, canon-calibre discussions of religion, the evil dead 2013, Crossover, Inspired By, Smut, minor prescription drug use, Vomiting

NSFW

idjitsaviors - @idjitsaviors - Glitchedwings & Akobel - @akobel

Baby, Baby

Summary: Trench was used to sitting on lots of objects, sitting in lots of cars. Baby was used to accommodating articles of clothing (mostly of the flannel variety), and many different items. Of course, Trench was not yet used to being dragged along on celestial plots, and Baby was not yet used to that happening in her backseat. Still, weirdness was the one constant in their daily lives, so the day the trench coat and car met was like any other. By now they’ve met several times over the years, caught in the crossfires of their two owners' friendship and pining. But when Trench is forced to spend months in Baby's trunk, will they finally watch their owners find love? And can they make something of their own? A mostly canon-adjacent fic following Dean and Cas through the eyes of Baby— and the eyes of Trench, her partner in crime.

Tags: Crack treated seriously, canon compliant, mutual pining SFW

[seenashwrite]

The Nail: June 2017

The Nail isn't about perfection. It isn't about award-level contenders. It's about seeing focus and effort and hard work radiate off of the screen. 

The Nail's purpose isn't to highlight genres of fics or specific ships written during a certain time frame - the sole focus is quality.

Character dimension. Writing with clever readers in mind. Solid world-building. Tension through boundaries. Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion.

And though yours truly - nice to meet you, new folks, I’m Nash! - is editor of the list, the goal is for YOU to curate the content. 

Read more about how all this came to be, find past editions, see what factors are considered when constructing the list, and learn how to get your recommendations in HERE.

Now - on to the stories!

For your reblogging convenience, here’s The Nail Master Post of Editions!

* ~ * ALL FROM THE WORLD OF "SUPERNATURAL" UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED * ~ *

Stand-a-lone stories with moderate-to-heavy sexual content will have 😳 beside them; series with such must have this either clearly noted in the overall info and/or clearly note it in the chapters/parts which contain such, so you'll need to check those on your own.

SPEED READS [from scene do-overs to gif-inspired one-shots to dripping drabbles, all less than 500 words]  

These won't be reviewed separately in Nash's usual three-point manner à la #Nash Gives [Feed]back due to their length, excepting those cases where the author pulled off a fleshed-out plot/character or had a unique take that was well-covered in the short amount of space. If there is no title provided by the author, Nash/the curator will pick one for them.

A HORRIFYING CONCEPT  - @ozonecologne

A visitor to the bunker offers Dean a chance for closure that empty bottles can't provide.

.

MAKING IT WEIRD - @helvonasche

This is the tale of that time Cas discovered porn, and with your help, he’s actually going to get some answers this time around.

.

12x21: A SCENE RE-WRITE - @prettymessedupsituation​

In script format, a better way of handling an incident that hit a sour note in the fandom is proposed that is logical, loving, and legitimately canon-worthy.

.

HOW THAT 'DUE DATE' TALK SHOULD'VE GONE - @tippitv

Dean and Sam discuss what just might be panning out to be more pattern than coincidence... after twelve years.

.

CLEAN-UP CREW - @senselesssamii

We all need help cleaning sometimes, that’s the simple truth. And some of us will need, shall we say, more specialized cleaners than others - get ready to giggle through the gross.

POEMS & POETICAL PROSE [mostly quick reads, these are actual poems of any structure/length, as well as short prose that sings like a songbird]

These also won't be reviewed separately in Nash's usual three-point manner à la #Nash Gives [Feed]back due to the typically short lengths & structure. An excerpted line is used in lieu of summary. If there is no title provided by the author, Nash/the curator will pick one for them.

WHAT IF - @saminzat

"Because once you’ve crossed the event horizon there is no going back."

.

MAMA TRIED -  @ariannnawinchester

“Dean is the boy your Mama warns you about.”

.

AN ANGEL'S PROMISE - @webcricket

"I promised you forever, and forever doesn’t end."

.

THE VALIANT - @littlegreenplasticsoldier 

"A valiant brother took the weight, the fall; The valiant’s brother took a throne, and guilt.”

* Nominated by @butiaintgonnaloveem, who said: “A poem from Dean's point of view that made my heart ache for him, from the way the guilt settles deep within him and how he contemplates his situation."

.

CASTIEL'S FALL - @vintagesam

"I fell at 60 miles per hour, on a back road in the middle of nowhere."

ON THE SHORT SIDE [500-ish to 1.5K]

STRATEGIC MOTHERING - @butiaintgonnaloveem    

A look at how Mary Winchester, in the words of the author, "deal[s] with trying to control her hunter’s instincts while living the civilian life", and the pros-and-cons that come along with them.

.

BREATH(E) - @withthedemonblood    

A well-written, thoughtfully played-out vignette on brotherly bonds that captures both sides of a stressful situation.

.

SO WHAT - YOU LIKE HIM BETTER, OR SOMETHING? - @atwistoffate

It's a simple question, and it should be a simple answer, but when dealing with the Winchesters - can it ever be?

.

FOR CAS - @jhoomwrites / @casbakespie 

A stunning coda to the season twelve finale, looking into a focused, driven, yet serene Dean’s response after he rose from his knees.

.

THE LITTLE THINGS - @melissaj616

A nice little piece showcasing Dean's observations of a hunter colleague who could be more, but there's no rush on either of their parts.

.

GOOD BOYS - @defilerwyrm

A poignant look into an alternative history wherein John Winchester chooses to allow Dean and Sam to be adopted into a nurturing home, far from the supernatural - to say more would spoil, though rest assured: the ending will take your breath away.

MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD [around 1.5K - 2K]

SPRING BREAK - @winchester-family-business

Fun, witty, easy read of a story about that time the Winchesters showed up on the author's doorstep... and proceeded to drag her along for a helluva ride.

.

SHOCK HORROR - @lipstickandwhiskey

After Dean is dealt a blow by a witch on a case, his closest friend offers support and stays by his side, carefully navigating over, around, and through the initial stages of shock.

.

HALLOWEEN HIJINKS -  @roxy-davenport

This is a tale of what it's like for Crowley to date a younger [and in a centuries-year-old demon's case - *much* younger] woman, one who still gets excited for the supernatural crowd's least favorite holiday: Halloween.  

LONGER [2K to  3K-ish]

IMPERFECT - @zepppie

Lives weave together, then pull apart, happens every day - this is the story of a hunter looking back on the portion of her life spent with Dean, told with such fluidity your heart will be ached and be soothed, all at the same time.

DEEP DIVES [3K and beyond, including completed multi-parters with lengthy chapters]

😳  NOT EMPTY NOW - @sp-oops 

This is a heart-grabber, one that will make you think and laugh and sigh, the story of the evolving dynamic between a hunter and an archangel, featuring a pristinely characterized Gabriel from beginning to end - and it's a damn fine ending.  

.

😳  5, 6, GRAB YOUR CRUCIFIX - @butiaintgonnaloveem

A story rife with sexual tension built around a bartender's most recent entanglement with Dean - now with his inner demon in full effect -  written with a slow build that doesn’t limit its evocative nature to just the bedroom.

.

A HAUNTED LIFE  -  @idontneedasymbol

Deferring to the author's on-point, pitch-perfect summation: "Some hauntings require salt and fire. Others aren't that easy. Dean runs into someone he knows, and Sam tries to make things right."  What I call in my own works a "Behind-the-scenes canon compliant", this is a piece that fits that bill, as it rings absolutely true/plausible, and all characterizations feel real/accurate. 

.

A LESSON IN INTERNATIONAL ETIQUETTE [Part Two] - @imagines-oneshots-blog

A certain Mr. Ketch may very well have met his match in an experienced, no-nonsense hunter who can go toe-to-toe with him, be it in attitude, in wit - or in killing.

SERIES SPOTLIGHT : SUPERNATURAL & SPN CROSS-OVERS [works that are ongoing series with at least 3 parts already published / completed series]

Due to time constraints, series are not read in full. They are given a cursory once-over for the quality basics, most importantly that the author has put maximum effort into world-building. 

The first chapter / first handful of chapters / first third of the first chapter - depending on length - are read to ensure there are no gross grammar / spelling errors, as well as ensuring the story's premise is made clear.

Thorough summations of the overall series, brief summaries of each individual chapter, and master indexes are highly preferred. Descriptors below are taken directly from the author/the story, edited only for length/clarity if needed. Same applies to series from other fandoms featured on the list.

THE PERFECT CRIME  - @mysaintsasinner

"Another storm is on the horizon, a war unlike any New York has seen before, and [Detective Sam Winchester] is about to find himself smack bang in the middle of it. Secrets will be revealed, bonds will be tested, and the perfect image Sam held of his parents will be distorted forever."

.

HUNTERS ON THE HELLMOUTH - @whatdoyouthinkmyjobis

[Supernatural + Buffy the Vampire Slayer]

"After a last-minute rescue from the clutches of Lucifer lands them in Sunnydale, California, the Winchesters run into an unusual hunter."

* Nominated for inclusion by @impandagrl , who said: "This exceptionally-written crossover series manages to believably blend the worlds of two of my favorite series while somehow nailing each of the many characters and treating them with equal care. It always leaves me anxiously awaiting the next chapter and is packed with all the action, humor, snark, drama - and occasional smut - that fans of either series should expect." 

.

CELEBRATE ME HOME - @callmesweetheartifyoumeanit       

"If you took a moment to ask her how long she’s been driving, she’d tell you she doesn’t know. Not because she doesn’t remember or because she doesn’t know where she started, but because after a while, all the roads just sort of blend together..."

.

SONS OF LAWRENCE  -  @mrs-squirrel-chester

[Supernatural + Sons of Anarchy]

"The Winchesters run the most notorious biker gang in Lawrence. They traffic illegal drugs, weapons, and anything else that makes them money and keeps them on top."

RANDOM FANDOMS  [all types, all lengths, all the things that aren't SPN but are still pretty dang super]

5/4/17, 18:00  -  @buckykingofmemes [Mod: @hellenhighwater ]

[FANDOM: Marvel - Avengers]

In which Friday kindly provides the transcript of a conversation between Bucky and Steve, so that a question may be answered with accuracy.

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WHO'S STEVE? - @bjorkshirepudding

[FANDOM: Marvel - Thor I & II / Avengers + HIMYM]

Have you heard the one about Steve Rogers walking into MacLaren’s Pub and running into Jane Foster’s research assistant Darcy Lewis, who’s sitting in a booth with Barney Stinson and the rest of the “How I Met Your Mother” gang… including that gal who bears a striking resemblance to Maria Hill?

* Unfortunately, this author has left Tumblr as of June 16th & the links have been removed so as not to cause confusion, however you can still find their [extensive!] body of work HERE at AO3, should you desire. - Nash *

.

BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH - @withstarryeyes

[FANDOM: Marvel - Avengers]

A short vignette taking a look at a moment in Bucky Barnes' life, how it feels for him to just be, to simply stand amongst the living.  

.

THE PART THAT COUNTS  (in-progress series, parts 1 -5 reviewed as of this writing) - @youre-on-a-starship

[FANDOM: Star Trek (current cinematic)]

"Two weeks after waking up with no recollection of the people and ship around you, you take your future in your hands and try to piece together your past and the events that lead up to you losing your memory of the last five years."

ORIGINAL WORK [anything from haiku to novella]

HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE MONSTERS - @rainygalaxynerd

A short pop of a gut punch to the senses, wherein the author drops you into the middle of a conversation - a situation - with no real bearings of which way is up, no way of knowing whose side we should be on, and then starts dropping revelations as fast as you can pick them up. It is bare, it is dark, it is gritty, it is unapologetic, it is chilling, and it reads like a scene straight out of a Scorsese flick.  

Happy reading & see you in July!

* ~ * Shameless Self-Promotion * ~ * 

[elizabethrobertajones]

So I thought I had a nice easy DVD to just watch to kill a bit of the train journey before I ran out of laptop battery (fun fact: my laptop appears to have the battery life of watching an entire DVDs worth of episodes. Neat.)  and I could have a break from all the nonsense I've been dealing with since Berens stomped through the entire show flipping tables.

uh anyway 3x05 ends the MotW part with pretty much the "i need you to see me" moment to reveal a kid was poisoned by a parent, has been trapped in a child-like stasis ever since, and required their suriving parent who had been innocently blind to this and accidentally feeding the ongoing trauma (caught up in those stories!) and not even realising there was something that needed to be heard, while the grown adult trapped in this stasis is represented as a child in the state they were when the parent last interacted with what they think of as them...

I'm back with an internet connection but I cba to go look at all the meta from previous rewatches people have done to see if people thought the step mother was a John parallel already, but if you look at it like she was getting a huge emotional benefit from harming the girl and probably was messed up enough to not consider how she felt (I mean, to the point of poisoning her into a coma so obviously) then John's messed up expectations on Dean by this point in season 3, in an episode Sam and Dean use as a battle ground mirror to their situation they can SEE is one about Sam letting Dean go or not in the same way, we know also that the only reason Dean is dying is because of John's messed up expectations on him - even in season 2 they knew John was asking too much and shouldn't have said his last words to Dean. Only he did, and so that's the final nail in the coffin, literally. Anyway, tops off a lifetime of John putting an emotional burden on Dean - some of his OTHER last words to Dean were how he would look after John instead of vice versa which I think was supposed to  be a positive recognition finally of how much work Dean had done propping up the family and not a "wow that's fucked up sorry" :P Idk, bitter Dean!girl goggles against John - always have and always will be. So I can see a parallel by season 3 where the narrative is swinging around in clear recognition of this - Dream a Little Dream of Me is going to make this textual soon enough.

And in that respect the doctor, the father of the coma girl, was always a sort of benign Mary mirror, so it makes it even funnier to me that his role became literally a proto mirror to this scene WITH Mary and the vindication of the little girl getting her message across and being finally understood, and gaining closure and getting to move on as a result, just kind of blows me away because it's retroactively made the episode an incredible mirror out of what it already was, because previously there was no need for that scene to be a mirror until season 12 because Mary and Dean didn't have that relationship because it was so painfully one-sided that the doctor's role mirroring Mary's was a pretty pointless thing to talk about, since all the time she was off the map, it didn't even make sense to say she would need to understand Dean herself, because that requires us to be confident she has even half a chance of getting a POV in the story.

I can't tell if Berens did this deliberately or if the fact this episode has the exact same resolution as 12x22 is just coincidence, because that's some pretty obscure canon recollection for a MotW that doesn't seem to have a lot of notoriety that even, for example, the next one does for Kripke hating it so much and I thiiink was this on the list of episodes Chuck apologises for in 4x18?

Perhaps it goes right to the top and was a Dabb suggestion for how it had to go down, because watching these two episodes back to back you go from 12x22 to a feeling like in some other world I would be writing meta about 3x06 vs 12x13, 9x21 and 6x04 because of the concept of having a dead ship captain, summoning the ghost, and using it for the resolution of family drama by having them confront each other again (this is the episode where Sam invokes Cas as part of that spell which is always worth a giggle). I felt like 6x04 pulled on this episode loosely just for having a vengeful ghost out to get family drama resolved - specifically going after family members that killed each other, and watching season 10 recently plus comments in season 12 between Rowena and Crowley, they're dead set on killing each other, as part of the Worst Family parallel as they often are when their dynamic comes up. Unfortunately I just can't get my head around 12x13 enough to work out how this all fits together but I have to believe there was a serious intention to resolve some stuff thematically which never made its way onto the screen.

But this arc was always tied into the Cain & Abel stuff by bringing in "Seth" or Oskar, Rowena's favoured other son. (There was a lot of meta between 10x22 and 10x23 about "Seth" because of biblical connotations I think tying it directly into that family but I genuinely can't remember because I don't do Bible lore, like... at all. Anyway he was a spare 3rd forgotten brother from somewhere or other directly relevant, if not Cain and Abel's we-forgot-Adam comparison) and Oskar vs Gavin was something that... didn't really happen except for the comment that that was what it had all been about from Rowena. As the grand finale to the MacLeod family drama that Dabb started based on the model of 3x06, which specifically mentions that one brother killed the other in a very "Cain and Abel" way, I am kinda annoyed more than ever we didn't get a ghost ship 2 episode to show how things were all upside down and different in that dabb era way but... Ugh, I don't know. Some episodes you would suggest minor upgrades if you had the powers, others you'd just take back to the drawing board :P

But while we're on the subject of Cain and Abel, 3x06's last conversation also has a conversation that the "same circumstances you'd do the same" argument in 9x13 directly mirrors as in does backwards and to a completely different conclusion... Which I find fascinating especially as the episode namedrops Cain and Abel in the first place. And 3x04 (Carver's first episode) uses the phrase "brother's keeper", also from the Cain story, about Sam and Dean. I mean season 9 & 10 churned up a lot of season 3 and we went over most of this at the time... I have just somehow found a continuous ramble in something that makes enough sense to alarm me that I managed to segue between each subject of what was one line notes I made on the train. So, cool.

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x21 watching notes

not proof read 

expectations: I was in fandom for 10x21

Here is the lowest bar ever

-

*buckleming crawl under the bar*

-

I took a few hours and I'm sure I have nothing to say that hasn't already been yelled about in great length by others, and I mostly just don't care about anything they ever do ever again but let's watch this for the plot because I'm a completionist, and this is going to affect 12x22 and 12x23 whether I want it to or not >.>

-

Oh the first scene is the promo one, which we already discussed a bit with all the parallels and such. The entire room and set and everything is yelling a ton of parallels and references, which I have already got a post on on my blog. Okay.

The stuff we didn't get was Jody calling to tell Sam about Eileen.

*pictured: the blogger taking about as big a step back to think about this as Sam just did to prioritise freaking out over Mary over grieving for Eileen*

(this is a thing - Sam compartmentalises so much, and he has done all season, and Dean's called him out on it, but it's practical when hunters are dying, and mom's in trouble, that you don't ditch everything, you help out hunters who are in trouble (12x20 - what if Tasha had been got by the BMoL? It only doesn't fit the pattern once they know what happened to her)... Sam says they know of another hunter who disappeared recently, anyhow. He links Mary to being the 3rd in trouble in the same way, and they KNOW the BMoL are with her and being sketchy. So. There's that.)

Anyway, Jody serves 2 purposes - we have the horror of Claire being on the BMoL's list so her call could have been about her, but we also know Jody has the APB out on Cas - Jody is becoming the nerve centre of the hunters because she's the one with all the links when it comes to looking out for them, it seems. Raising girls who have a foot in the life, and keeping an eye out on the official record for other hunters who might be in trouble, as well as occasionally bringing them cases in the same way.

So that call could have been to tell them Cas had been found dead in a ditch like Dean feared, or Claire had been found dead in a ditch like WE fear, but instead it's Eileen for Sam. It's a sort of last horrible hurrah for using Cas and Eileen parallels - that both are connected to Jody like this. And Sam gets his horrible news while Dean had been waiting for it about Cas.

Sam shuts down and goes all business like, putting a potentially still living hunter (and also their mom but HONESTLY his compartmentalising is that good I wonder if mentioning this was only to get Dean emotionally hooked) ahead of dealing with what happened to Eileen.

At this point I feel like Terrible Coffee AU has become his djinn dream where he gets to just fuck off from all his responsibilities and scream in the woods for as long as he likes and actually feel everything he's bottled up.

Also I am going to go write in a scene where Sam gets to go scream in the woods.

Also if you've been reading it, feel free to assume that between scenes where we've seen Sam, he has been off screaming in the woods. Or that it's canon Sam's djinn dream and starts some point immediately after this.

-

Hi yes I am now a bitter Sam girl, who knew.

-

So Mittens has helpfully explained the bad car continuity to me while I was blinking at Sam saying "2 hunter deaths" in the motel and "7" in the morgue. Possibly in all that driving time they reached out to others and found out more, but it really doesn't sound like it, it just sounds like he's repeating the exposition but with a higher number.

If they did spend like 50 hours in the car as she worked out, then I guess he would have had time to make a lot of calls.

-

*gif of the guy with the duct tape on the really big crack*

-

Things I like: Jared's acting of Sam at the morgue, anyway.

Thinks I hate: he's acting like that because Eileen is dead and it's the worst thing to happen to Sam in ages and he can't do anything about it, emotions-wise. And there are bigger problems than giving Eileen a hunters' funeral and getting shitfaced for a week.

-

But where *did*they get 7 monster related deaths? Last scene it was all 2 isn't a pattern and that seemed to be the point of the conversaion but now the point of the conversation is omg there's been seven.

I'd ask who proof reads this but the answer is clearly either no one, or Bob Singer.

-

ANYWAY I went out to get snacks for a party tomorrow, nearly passed out on the way home, and also in a separate incident got stung by a bunch of nettles and it was still more fun than watching this :P

-

Mary is one of the ones going around killing hunters, though they kept her away from Eileen. She's also being kept in a room one part Heaven parallel one part panic room parallel, being a sort of Sam in 4x21 and Cas in 8x17 mash up. She's being brainwashed to go kill hunters and Toni comes to mock her for not being able to tell reality from fiction.

Buckleming like little digs at fans so I'm just gonna ignore that because I am ignoring them.

It is also thematic for the problems they've all been having of dealing with their expectations about this that and the other, or in copious denial and so on. It's ALWAYS a relevant theme to this show but this year we don't have a strong meta character or plot, it's just in the characterisation.

We get a giant chunk of exposition that explains eeeverything. I was joking last night about the pie subtext being explained in the text and taking all the fun out of it... Obviously that was a lie and I've been really enjoying it (and also it's not strictly out of the subtext, it was just being heavily utilised to tell the story instead of passing jokes, which made it even more fun than normal) but this really does take the joy out of meta-ing it except that I guess it's the show telling us we were right to pick up on everything going on with Mary under the surface

So Toni takes a thin connection to start talking about all the Mary stuff, covering:

- the "illusion" she has about her perfect life as it stood before she died - well the concept of "perfect" in general which is something being challenged everywhere in the fact vs fiction stuff - her willful denial it was normal despite that fact she was a hunter and still hunting so it wasn't even like she was living totally normally - the fact it wasn't all based on her deal with Azazel, and that that was going to come for her at some point - despite reading his journal a zillion times, just like last week Mary didn't realise Ketch was a psychopath until massive lines were crossed, her willful denial that John went off the rails after her death - that Sam and Dean didn't TELL her this stuff - literally just saying that John abused them - that Sam and Dean are damaged because of what he did (and that he did it because it was her fault for the deal)

*And all pretty much in these words*

Like. Wow. This is obviously, like the same bulletpoints on the secret pinboard we don't see in the writer's room explaining everything about what's going on with each character. Buckleming copied down the bulletpoints and then somehow thought that was just their notes for what Toni was going to say here :P I disapprove of exposition like this, but it has now brought all of this into the main text for Mary to deal with. Whether she agrees or not, she has to consider that what John did was abuse, and that Sam and Dean aren't telling her everything about it. She can't know for sure whether it was or not without their explanation but she'll have to ask them for it and weigh their answers against the possibility of abuse... I don't really know wtf they're doing with all this but it's forced too much character stuff on Mary at once to even deal with.

Toni goes on to say they're restoring her to being Mary Campbell, stripping away all her life after things got messy with cupids and kids and all... She's a born hunter, and to the BMoL they clearly see it in her blood (just like they see being a BMoL legacy in people's blood). Anyway nature vs nurture stuff, and they're going for raw nature as a killer (which Ketch firmly believes in about himself even if it's possible he was just programmed to be this way from such a young age he never got a chance to think he was anything else)... It fits into the wider discussion of the season which also relates to the nephilim.

And by stripping away her life, it's reducing her to a person without choice in what she is - "interesting choice. soon you won't be making any". It's blatantly just cramming in themes of the season, but I guess this is what Buckleming episodes are often for: laying out on paper everything that has been hidden more carefully and subtly in the juicy parts of the season :P This is the bare bones, look at what this story is about, explanation.

-

Oh I guess the cut on Mary's palm also parallels Sam's in 7x02 which was his link to reality. She's having her own reality issues but this reminds her that she's being made to kill hunters, not monsters. And hunters who seem to know her, even to be friendly when they find her in their house (that whole scene seemed weirdly out of character for a dude I'd never met to be chill about that but whatever, he kept his still-bloody machete in the umbrella rack, maybe he was just sloppy)

-

Crowley comes to cross over some storylines at the very last moment of the season, after basically living in a bubble for the entire season since 12x08. He greets Dr Hess by name, and I had some speculation he was somewhat connected to the way the Winchesters got the tip off to kill Ramsay in 12x15... Earlier they were talking about hellhounds and it cut to Crowley to suggest he was involved, so this seems to be confirming a connection, especially for the messing around with Hellhounds between the BMoL and Crowley.

Yep, he loaned out the hellhound to Ketch, anyway. >.>

This conversation finally confirms what I suspected since 12x01 - the BMoL have a deal with Crowley that crossroad deals go uninterrupted as long as there's no other demonic scheming in the country, just the humans idiotic enough to summon demons to sell their souls so it's all their own fault. This shows corruption in the BMoL that they let this happen anyway - a line drawn that they can't keep the demons out so they just pretend to go along with them like they had a choice in the matter. I suspect this deal with the BMoL is more symbolic than anything that they don't harrass a percentage of demons that they come about in the course of things, because there is no way to police humans choosing to do this without like, a Minority Report level awareness of what they're about to do. There's no saving people who made the deals, though the Winchesters have intervened several times on behalf of people they felt didn't deserve the punishment for the deal they made. The BMoL have opinions about that.

-

Crowley is also, predictably, challenged about his relationship to the Winchesters, which is a sort of as per usual thing - and he's saved them an awful lot lately. He pretends not to be conflicted about it to Dr Hess, but the close up on his poker face is still a dramatic close up after challenging him about something or other. There's been some speculation he might come to a decision about them but the Lucifer thing has been really throwing him off for me and any speculation I might speculate, by keeping him out of the way. His interactions with them in 12x12 and 12x15 showed his loyalties pretty clearly but that was a 2 times is a pattern that could be broken sort of thing and here he is finally being put to that test (his earlier interactions helping them find Lucifer, despite some mild self sacrifice gestures in 12x07, were really more about them solving a joint problem with some character stuff on the side... he begins being put to the test in the second half of the season)... It SEEMS pretty clear that his loyalties to being the big bad evil dude are fucked when it comes to the Winchesters despite himself, and he stands with Mary on the screen behind him, almost like a faction, or picked side, in this conversation, but that could just be because it was there on the wall to show they're monitoring Mary so closely they have her blood pressure and everything on display and Crowley's involvement is incidental.

Anyway I'm not sure which way he'd go, because everything suggests he'd pick protecting them but if it happens this episode, any amount of fuckery can intervene and if it happens later, I'm still not sure wtf the point of this Lucifer stuff is for him and what it means for where he's going

it's just... messy and weird and I don't get the point of it yet because it feels more like they need this thing happening on the side because they gave the Marks contracts to be in this season and this is how they've been killing time, because neither character has that much left to offer the Winchesters because Sam's arc with Lucifer ended in season 5 or 7, and Dean's with Crowley in 10 or 11. Sam might not LIKE finding out Lucifer is still alive but they haven't been connected since 11x10, and Dean might be pissed off at Crowley's choice but aside from lol we're exes jokes, nothing has happened between them all season, and even Cas working with Crowley wasn't an arc so much as just showing the current state of politics between them.

-

I type all this ignoring another scene in Crowley's lair, this time the Lucifer and his minion who is almost 10000% not going to survive because he's acting as a shifty demon, a black actor, and talking to Lucifer, in a Buckleming episode, and we cut our losses with caring about this stuff. >.> I'm done since the cold open.

-

Sam phones up Crowley, which is rare enough, but he has a reason to be pissed off at him, and that's because Sam already suspects that Crowley's at least half-responsible.

He's hated him since they met but if Crowley's gonna die, Sam should do it, and this is a good motivation, at least. If Cas gets to vaporise Lucifer with nephilim power (I hope although like anything this season I'm not putting money on it :P) then Sam deserves a big kill of his own >.>

-

Anyway Crowley just called Cas "the Winchesters' love slave"

The old refrain of using them plural to talk about Cas's investment in them, the suggestion there is something sexual about his devotion to them missing the point entirely about why he cares for them, but also hinting at a truth underneath that Crowley knows full well the situation with Dean n Cas, and tbh Lucifer has possessed Cas so he probably knows Cas's side too... A sort of awareness from both parties in the room that Cas is bananas for Dean but using it in a mocking way, and making it a general moral failing.

-

BMoL scene - no one has any nuanced characterisation that makes a great deal of sense in context, e.g. Toni trash talking Ketch in front of their superior, but we get some exposition that Hess thinks Ketch is cruel enough to take control of the BMoL one day and would do well as a test run as head of the American operation. Toni is also up for the job out of the blue because why not.

-

For some reason Dean goes to check their junk mail. They have a letter from Eileen! More expotion in the form of a letter. I hope she explains why she was still in America, but I've paused on Sam's face when Dean says Eileen because I like hurting myself, and look at poor broken little Sammy in there :<

Of course, making it aaaall about Sam and Eileen and making it clear he was the one more emotionally connected to her.

He's wearing a tan coat and blue shirt which makes me nervous casting him as a Cas mirror while dealing with this

-

Nice montage of Sam and Dean checking for bugs.

I am assuming they go to their trap, and Mary comes to kill this dude they made up, and Sam and Dean are like D:

-

oh wow gosh there's a design flaw in Crowley's control on Lucifer and it can be reversed so Lucifer can control Crowley who would have ever thought........

(I mean maybe not this exact scenario but that things were potentially going to flip between them at some point and Lucifer would be in charge...)

I hate that they used the "reverse the polarity" line because it didn't deserve that :P

I would wonder if there's some meta application to this theme though - especially with Mary AND Cas being controlled, Lucifer being controlled has been the least interesting or well-used part of this, barely even serving as a mirror to this, but it's not too late :P

-

Toni asking how Ketch knew the hellhound sat when she told it to and basically says better not to disagree with it even if you can't see what it's doing. Can't work out what level this commentary works at.

They ARE about to be duped by the Winchesters via a transmission they can only hear without seeing what they're doing. I wouldn't *mind* Ketch being mauled by the hellhound although I do think one of the Winchesters should kill him

Sam owes him 2, Mary would get a hell of a lot of satisfaction but I still suspect Dean will do it anyway for meta purposes, dark mirrors, etc.

-

oooh ketch and mary scene. Please be as interesting as these two characters generally are regardless of writer

-

Oh no her face when she sees Ketch. I don't think she can credit her memory of fighting him enough to know if it was real or not, and after spending so much time with him he's a familiar face >.> And he's soft on her, which is a whole other problem, but whatever happened with Ketch, I think Mary finds him weirdly comforting. But his idea of comfort is that he's happy for the transformation she's going through - mostly because she'll be like him and they can have lots of sex while killing things together

Then Mary uses the "world without monsters" line as the lie falls away and she realises how badly this has turned on her and her dream.

It's sort of the realisation I wanted her to have ~12x14 when I wrote my "a world without monsters" fic but oh well better late than never - she is going through the exact mental process I wrote which is always fun to watch on screen :P

And now Mary is feeling betrayed - "we worked together" and she mentions how she knew him. She uses that "closeness" even when he denies it to get near enough to grab his gun and *nearly* repeats how she nearly killed herself in 12x09 before Cas stabbed Billie and shocked her out of it. Ketch grabs the gun to protect her from herself, despite putting her through what makes her want to kill herself >.>

(This scene is brilliant by the way)

Mary now honourary member of Team Free Will - all she ever had when it came down to it was her free will... except she never even had that. What Toni mentioned about her deal was coersion from Heaven and Hell because she doesn't know about the cupids, that the only reason she had her family was because her free will was taken away. But actually FEELING its loss immediately hurts her spirit so badly. (And she didn't ask to be brought back and wouldn't have chosen it)

Anyway that was an incredible performance, and Ketch was okay too, showing his weird half-concern where he kind of likes her and wants her to be what he thinks will help her - to take away the pain not by killing her but by removing her will to feel upset by this.

Mary is left sobbing on her knees and I just love that she was allowed to messy cry and hiccup her lines like... that was brilliant. I love Mary okay.

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Although Sam and Dean seem to be going to their trap already so I now doubt Mary will come

there's a flickering light by the warehouse which makes it look like ghosts are around.

Just them!

Dean gets kicked in the nuts, which is a reverse mirror of Mary kicking Ketch in the nuts - he the light mirror to the dark kicker, vice versa to Mary etc. Dean makes a quip about how they'll have to start dating if she keeps doing that, which in a Buckleming way solidifies this. I'm just, not gonna poke that.

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Oh but it's a Crowley and Lucifer scene next.

God, watching the end of season 9 so recently really makes me hate this even more because remember when Crowley won everything?? After he lost Dean all the oomph went out of him - Dean shoving him in 10x02 and Crowley realising he's fucked and hastily manipulating himself to safety - when he makes that bargain with Sam, he loses his threat and cred to them and on a narrative level. There's nothing Crowley can do to the Winchesters now that's as bad as demon!Dean, and he's had no motivation to really get in their business and they don't fear him. It's not just a Buckleming problem although they've written most of Crowley this season it feels like (or these scenes are all individually 1000 years long) - they introduce Rowena immediately to give him another reason to be relevant and in scenes, but she quickly discovers he's whipped by the Winchesters, and he spends season 11 messing around being invested in main plot stuff just because he happens to live in the same world as them, not because he's out to get them or doing anything they urgently need to stop him doing. Even him harbouring Amara was only tangential to giving them a way to discover where she was - Crowley was nothing really to do with that particular confrontation. And then he got mired in the Lucifer stuff...

Now this season he has not only lost his edge but he's genuinely only being portrayed as protecting the Winchesters or being an idiot. And now Lucifer has managed to take control of him, but not even through his own cleverness, just getting a random demon to help, and being told he could do it.

There's really nothing of interest in these scenes because it's all.. blah.

I mean I wouldn't mind Crowley going soft so much because it's been interesting in other episodes (12x12, 12x15, and the season 11 episodes where it was interesting or even 10x14 or 10x17) but that's not really being explored as a character thing - now Buckleming are just exploiting that Crowley's been off his game for seasons by doing this to him.

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But I suppose the loss of agency thing is sort of relevant with Mary and Cas also in trouble - it's like everyone but Sam and Dean is being controlled or is controlling >.>

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I assume Crowley did just get some karma from Olivette and he's now possessing that rat, especially since they made such a big deal out of cutting Crowley with an angel blade = loud demon burny sounds, and then like in 11x01 when Cas stabbed Crowley's much shot and stabbed meatsuit, there was no sound effect.

Honestly at this point it sounds much more fun to have him stay as a rat, and also I guess his meatsuit is compromised

i would like someone else to play Crowley for a short period just like in 11x01 but without the orgy murder, and not because I dislike Mark S because he's made Crowley's long endurance since season 10 much more worth it than I guess it could have been with a less charismatic actor. But because it would be interesting and shake things up...

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Wait I completely forgot to talk about the toni in the car scene... I mean that was all predictable and she was winding them up with the truth/half truths, and of course Mary is the sorest sore spot to push. The reveal she and Ketch had sex has a predictable reaction.

I finally figured out what's bothered me all episode - the Brits don't use ANY euphemisms for sex. IDK if Buckleming are particularly verbally creative anyway but they didn't spend any time giggling at some sort of list online of ridiculous British euphemisms and then go out of their way to use it, so there's now a drinking game for every time someone says "sex" in a pained British accent.

The real crime is they haven't seen Austen Powers because using "shagged" is at least the most obvious one to use if you're scared of being imaginative.

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shoot out in the Bunker!

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Dean gets some really improbable headshots but it's cool because I love him

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"how many more guys you have in here?" "our mom! where is she!?"

lemme guess she's the other guy in here

*mary emerges with a gun*

oh lookie at that then

I suppose the 8x17 and Naomi parallels are about to do something. Mary's already on the crypt scene graph a few times. I'm laughing because 10x03 has another "I know you're in there" that I have totally blanked on since it aired, mostly because the failed ones really just kind of stack up in a little sad pile in the corner, but I did literally just watch it.

Interesting that Toni is ~more~ of the Naomi and Mary is basically here to free her... Ketch gets out sooner because Mary makes a shot just to scare Dean and Ketch gets his gun. Toni is the only one in peril now but she's the one who seems to have been doing the hard work on Mary.

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elizabethrobertajones oh cripes it didn't work what the hell did Robbie DO he must have blackmail material on Singer and killing off all his faves is payback

mittensmorgul >.> wait, what didn't work?

elizabethrobertajones the crypt scene failure with Mary

mittensmorgul oh, yeah. well, did we expect it to?

elizabethrobertajones I mean I know he played the game hard to establish only romantic love breaks it in his episodes

mittensmorgul The crypt scene was supposed to be founded on mutual love and understanding

elizabethrobertajones but... like... did that get engraved permanently in the show's rulebook?

mittensmorgul the whole "YOU KNOW ME" but Mary really... doesn't//

elizabethrobertajones I know :P But it doesn't work on Sam and Dean??? they have at least 3 failures between them

mittensmorgul sam broke through in blade runners... adn after he killed abaddon

elizabethrobertajones yeah but he wasn't in danger and Dean was only sort of thinking about killing him

mittensmorgul but it took cas intervening in 10.03

elizabethrobertajones not overtly :P it wasn't a staged crypt scene it was just Sam breaking through Dean's murder fugue state caused by murdering someone else

mittensmorgul yeah...

elizabethrobertajones but 10x03 "i know you're in there" has no effect, and Robbie's parting one in 11x16 seemed mostly to be there to prove the rule

mittensmorgul nobody's ever really broken dean free in true crypt scene fashion

elizabethrobertajones I mean you have a point about Mary not knowing them and it being a miscommunication thing but in the wider picture I'm actually stunned that it works every time :P

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones I'm guessing she gets reclaimed some way or other but it seems they need to find another way than just appealing to her like that which means even if they break through it's going to be a subversion of sorts and has a past failure

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones while Dean nailed it first go on Cas :P although! they never told her to kill them and leaving them to die is different from making the shot

mittensmorgul yep if they'd ordered her to fire on them... that might've broken their hold on her It's like Doctor Who and the Big Red Button

elizabethrobertajones but the important thing is that's not what they showed here :P

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Anyway that's pretty ominous about the Bunker being their tomb - yet more stuff about it being less and less like their home - it's always being threatened but every couple of years it seems really like it's going to permanently happen. I spent this equivalent area of season 10 convinced they were going to torch the Bunker. With it being Dabb era, and the 5th year of the Bunker, bets are off.

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Mary talking about it being easier to hurt the people she loves, like there aren't only 2 people and she just left them to die and doesn't expect to see them again

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"How do you feel?" "Fine. I'm fine"

I think she might take the cake for one of the worst "i'm fines" ever on this show.

She's now successfully been transformed into the Mary I wrote in A World Without Monsters and I never wanted to see that on screen despite kinda writing it assuming it would happen.

*shoves my fic far away from me because it's done nothing but cause me pain* :P

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oh thank god that's over. I'm going to go to bed and spite-write Sam and Eileen's relationship accelerating dramatically faster than I meant it to in Terrible Coffee AU.